"A fascinating and highly readable survey." -- Library Journal "Crusader and concubine, laundress and troubadour, mystic and midwife and miniaturist, beguine and bondwoman and the bersatrix rocking the cradle of kings -- all find their rightful place in this bountiful compendium. With vast resourcefulness and a lively (and often irreverent) eye for the creaturely real, the authors make it impossible to sustain any last lingering illusions about the Middle Ages being 'a man's world.'" -- John Bugge, Emory University