“Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages” by Dan Jones (2021). If you are looking into reading non-fiction, specifically history, Dan Jones is a great place to start. He’s excellent at telling individual stories that encompass the essence of an event or time period. He keeps the reader engaged without losing them in the details. For P&T, he recounts European history from the sack of Rome (410) to the sack of Rome (1527). The thrones of the title are the familiar kings, emperors, and popes of the time which Jones combines with the powers that helped move along the significant events such as religion, trade, climate, disease, knowledge, technology etc. Jones doesn’t hesitate to draw parallels to modern times, keeping the humanity of his characters front and center. The serious historian may argue that 600 pages is far too few to properly cover 1000 years of history and that his view is too Euro-centric, but he addresses these criticisms in the foreword; the people and events covered are presented in an adequate depth to understand their importance and act as a springboard for those that wish to pursue a more in depth work. Entertaining, informative, and downright fun, I can’t recommend P&T highly enough.