A World Lit Only by Fire The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance-Portrait of an Age

This beautifully illustrated new color edition of the classic New York Times bestseller brings readers more intimately into the medieval world than ever before. From tales of chivalry and valor to the barbarity of the Inquisition and the devastation of the plague, no era has been a greater source of fascination and horror than the Middle Ages. With extraordinarily crafted prose, acclaimed historian William Manchester takes us on a vividly painted journey into the medieval mind. We travel from the depths of the Dark Ages to the heights of the rebirth that spawned some of history's greatest artists and thinkers—and that eventually ushered the West into the brilliance of the Renaissance. For Manchester, the man who best epitomized this new quest for knowledge in a changing world was Ferdinand Magellan, the great circumnavigator, whose inspiring story Manchester dramatically recounts, along with the stories of countless medieval men and women from every walk of life who influenced and changed the course of history.

William Raymond Manchester (1922-2004) was a bestselling author, biographer, and historian, whose 18 books have been translated into over 20 languages. One of his most important books, about John F. Kennedy, Death of a President (BBS Publishing Corporation), won the Dag Hammarskjold International Literary Prize. Manchester also wrote major biographies on H. L. Mencken, Douglas MacArthur, and a trilogy on Winston Churchill. The last book in the Last Lion trilogy (Little, Brown) was published posthumously in November 2012. Manchester won a Guggenheim Fellowship and the National Humanities Medal, among other awards, and was adjunct professor emeritus and writer-in-residence at Wesleyan University.