A new look at the Middle Ages -- Rome and its Western successors, 500-750 -- Crisis and transformation in the East, 500-850/1000 -- The Carolingian experiment, 750-1000 -- The expansion of Christian Europe, 500-1100 -- Reshaping Western Europe, 1000-1150 -- The long economic boom, 950-1300 -- The ambiguities of political reconstruction, 1150-1300 -- 1204 : the failure of alternatives -- Defining society : gender and community in late medieval Europe -- Money, war and death, 1350-1500 -- Rethinking politics, 1350-1500.