"This is the work of a man with a rare historical gift: the imagination to recreate the world of which he writes and the critical scholarship to make the exercise of imagination fruitful. . . . One of the most exciting books on history to appear in recent years."—The Economist   A distinguished historian presents an absorbing study of the main personalities and the influences that molded the history of Western Europe from the late tenth to the early thirteenth centuries—the formative period of modern Western civilization. R. W. Southern describes the chief forms of social, political, and religious organization, analyzing a wealth of concrete, highly significant episodes. He recaptures the personal experiences and the individual consciences of the men who guided "the making of the Middle Ages."