educational but light reads.
(all the footnotes are there, but not cluttering up the text.)

they make it fun. but there aspects of medeaval life that are hard to understand--the sense of duty (to church, to lord, to land)the basic brutality of life--which was often short, painful and lonely. but they also convey some of the joys.. simple pleasures. life was more communal, villiages were often really extended families--you knew all your neighbors, and they knew you--its been pointed out, by some historian that prior to WWI, over 90% of the people living in UK lived and died with in 10 miles of their place of birth, and over 50% had never been more than 10 miles from home.

the Cheddar man( a bog man found in cheddar england) yeilded viable DNA. about 40% of the people in Cheddar are related to him! imagine! almost 1000 years after his death, there are still people in the area who share his DNA.
(the americas, (US, Canada and Mexico-and large parts of south america) are very different. there is lots of immigration, and lots of mobility.
(my mother can trace her family back 500 years in one city, dublin) me and my siblings were all born here in NYC, but
once neice and nephew were born in Japan, (another in VA) and my grandchildren in CA. how different our life is here. its not just technology, but how we live in our community. our bonds are so much looser..

my other obsession