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Michael Cooney

mc{at}michaelcooney.com

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Friendship, ME 04547 USA

RECOMMENDATIONS

There will be lots.

I recommend a series of TV programs by Terry Jones of “Monty Python” fame. He is a real Historian, did several series for BBC television. One is all about the Middle Ages. It has a lot of stuff we learned, and still learn wrong in school. The peasantry weren’t illiterate oafs; the church wasn’t particularly holy and noble; Knights didn’t rescue Damsels in Distress (that myth was invented by the Victorians a little over a hundred years ago).

Terry Jones also did a series on the Crusades (guess who were the bloodthirsty murderous monsters in the story) and a series on the Barbarians. Turns out the bloodthirsty murderous monsters in that story were the Romans -- researchers tell us that almost all of the peoples described by the Romans as “barbarian” were more civilized (nicer, less violent) and more technologically advanced than the Romans were. But almost all the writings we have from those times were Roman Catholic Church writings and their histories were wildly one-sided and inaccurate.

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