"Many times the title of a book promises more than its content delivers. Travel in the Middle Ages does just the opposite. Jean Verdon... offers the reader an original and scholarly work that has all the authority of learned and detailed research but that manages to read like an intriguing creative mystery novel. This book offers a rare and informative insight into the life and times of the European Middle Ages. It is recommended for specialist and non-specialist alike."—Cistercian Studies Quarterly"Jean Verdon does a comprehensive job of accounting for most motives, methods, costs, durations, dangers, fears, landscapes, seascapes, fantasies, criticisms, and occasions of medieval travel from the fourth-century Bordeaux Pilgrim to Christopher Columbus. He admirably includes Arabic travelers and their wide Asian and African range, notably Ibn Battuta, as well as the great Jewish traveler, Ibrahim ibn Yakub." —The Historian"Verdon has written a fascinating and informative book that is generously interspersed with examples of medieval travel from a constellation of medieval sources...." —History: Reviews of New Books"General readers, eager to be led on an armchair voyage through medieval times and terrain... [will] find it broadening." —Choice"...[E]ngrossing.... Through Verdon's extensive and skillful use of historic accounts ... the reader learns how travelers coped." —ForeWord's Top Ten"An original and scholarly work by Jean Verdon... and ably translated into English by George Holoch. An expertly researched history and thoroughly reader friendly descriptive text offers the students and non-specialist general reader alike, a rare and informative insight into life and times of Europeans several centuries past. Travel in the Middle Ages is seminal and enormously important contribution to Medieval Studies reference collections and reading lists." —Midwest Book Review"Many thanks to George Holoch, whose English translation makes it possible for us to read French medievalist Jean Verdon's book Travel in the Middle Ages. It is a well organized and well composed book. ...every story is told with wit and humor.... This book, like Verdon's other books on premodern pleasure, leisure, night, and drink, reflects the delightful nature of human history." —The Sixteenth Century Journal"…genial, lively, wide ranging… suitable for general readers and undergraduates…" —Historian
