The Edge of the World: A Cultural History of the North Sea and the Transformation of Europe - Softcover

Splendid. A heady mix of social, economic, and intellectual history, written in an engaging style. It offers a counterpoint to the many studies of the Mediterranean, arguing for the importance of the North Sea. Exciting, fun, and informative.--Michael Prestwich, Professor of History, Durham University

An utterly beguiling journey into the dark ages of the north sea. A complete revelation. Pye writes like a dream. Magnificent.--Jerry Brotton, author of A HISTORY OF THE WORLD IN TWELVE MAPS

A closely-researched and fascinating characterization of the richness of life and the underestimated interconnections of the peoples all around the medieval and early modern North Sea. A real page-turner.--Chris Wickham, author of THE INHERITANCE OF ROME: A HISTORY OF EUROPE FROM 400 TO 1000

For more than a millennium, the North Sea was our trading floor and our internet. Yet this connection, this period, and this sea remain wrapped in fog. With elegant writing and extraordinary scholarship, Pye does a rare but important thing by focusing not on lands but on the waters that unite them.--Hugh Aldersey-Williams, author of PERIODIC TALES and ANATOMIES

Persuasive and eloquent. A radical perspective on the modern world. No book I have read has looked at the available evidence in the way it is presented here. A multilayered, complicated, dense book that demands time to be read and be digested but rewards by giving one plenty to chew on.

Brilliant. Pye is a wonderful historian . . . bringing history to life like no one else.--Terry Jones

This is the kind of book that can open up new vistas. An inspiring book, full of surprises.

A compelling account of societies around the North Sea will make you see the world in a different light.

A masterly storyteller.

Bristling, wide-ranging and big-themed. At its most meaningful, history involves a good deal of art and storytelling. Pye's book is full of both. An exuberant amalgam of sources. A fruitful way of reorienting our thinking about the past. By bringing back to life a mostly forgotten cast of medieval shippers, mauraders, thinkers and tinkerers, Pye challenges us to consider how we got to be where -- and who -- we are.

Saints and spies, pirates and philosophers, artists and intellectuals: they all criss-crossed the grey North Sea in the so-called "dark ages," the years between the fall of the Roman Empire and the beginning of Europe's mastery over the oceans. Now the critically acclaimed Michael Pye reveals the cultural transformation sparked by those men and women: the ideas, technology, science, law, and moral codes that helped create our modern world. This is the magnificent lost history of a thousand years. It was on the shores of the North Sea where experimental science was born, where women first had the right to choose whom they married; there was the beginning of contemporary business transactions and the advent of the printed book. In The Edge of the World, Michael Pye draws on an astounding breadth of original source material to illuminate this fascinating region during a pivotal era in world history.