The Bright Ages by M. Gabriele & D.M. Perry

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Here’s our take on Matthew Gabriele’s & David M. Perry’s The Bright Ages.

Quick facts

• Full title: The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe
• Authors: Matthew Gabriele (professor, Medieval Studies, Virginia Tech) & David M. Perry (journalist, historian, former professor at Dominican University)
• First published: 2021
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Number of pages without notes: 253

Our review

The Bright Ages is obviously a book that we here, at The Medieval Reporter, should love. However, in all fairness, it does have a couple of flaws: it’s good, but not great. The criticism that follows below may surprise you if you’re a long-term reader of our content. But even though we’re a website that aims to illuminate the supposed Dark Ages, we also try to do honest reviews.

In our experience, Gabriele’s and Perry’s writing style in The Bright Ages is a bit overbearing at times. Both of them are so intent on ramming their point home that they often break the “fourth wall” and address the reader directly. With all the amazing historical content that the authors have assembled, this is totally unnecessary and distracts from the very history that they’re trying to tell.

The Bright Ages is filled with great stories that can stand on their own well enough. They certainly don’t need a modern commentator to specifically highlight certain points, often only to shoehorn them into a bigger narrative that the story doesn’t necessarily lend itself to. Gabriele and Perry could’ve employed more “show, don’t tell” and moved much of the commentary to the epilogue.

With the right implementation, this would’ve left more space for the story to unravel on its own. As it stands, The Bright Ages has quite short chapters in the first place. All of these, then, also have to dedicate a couple of pages to the “meta” story Gabriele and Perry are trying to bring across. That makes the book simultaneously a bit shallow for the medieval enthusiast as well as a bit of a whirlwind for the uninitiated. It almost feels as if the authors tried to cater to both audiences and – in our experience – failed to satisfy either.

Admittedly, it’s quite difficult to explain the causes of the Viking Age or the rise to power of Genghis Khan in just a couple of paragraphs. (This is something we, at The Medieval Reporter, often struggle with as well.) But to string all these, many stories together in just over 250 pages leads to The Bright Ages buckling under its own weight, which – all in all – is a shame.

Undoubtedly, this book is a much-needed counter-narrative to the still strong propaganda surrounding the “Dark Ages”. That’s why we were really looking forward to this book for a long time. To be fair, these expectations are probably also the reason why the book left us a little disappointed at times.

We think The Bright Ages could really profit from some in-depth extensions here and there – whilst pushing the metanarrative to the background. We understand that Gabriele and Perry tried to write an introductory book to the Middle Ages that isn’t as intimidating as a lot of other weighty tomes happen to be. But we think a second, slightly more fleshed-out edition of The Bright Ages could really put this book on the map without turning it into the monstrously monumental work that Gabriele and Perry rightfully tried to avoid writing.

Our verdict

Where to buy

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• Buy Matthew Gabriele’s & David M. Perry’s The Bright Ages over at Amazon!