Dr. Mirabilis

People looking for a book that captures the atmosphere of the Middle Ages - both the intellectual life and the everyday life - would be much better advised to read this book than, for example, Umberto Eco's Name of the Rose. I definitely agree with the other reviewer that this is a classic which should be much better known. Not only is the content interesting for the reasons mentioned above, but it is very well written - a fine piece of literature. My only complaint would be that it is too short.Another novel which I think does a wonderful job of capturing the feel of life in the High Middle Ages is T.H. White's Once and Future King.

This novel about Roger Bacon, the great English medieval monk and scientific thinker, is one of the finest historical novels ever written, and yet -- paradoxically -- it is also one of the finest science-fiction novels ever written, by one of the greatest writers of science fiction who ever lived.It is science fiction because it deals with a man who dares to envision a future changed by scientific discovery and technological innovation, in a time and a place where such thoughts are all but unimaginable ... and yet, because Blish so carefully yet unobtrusively grounds his work in superb historical research and recreation, it works perfectly.It is a tragedy that this book is out of print.[NOTE: DOCTOR MIRABILIS is the first volume of what Blish intended to be a trilogy under the general title AFTER SUCH KNOWLEDGE..., from the ancient question, "After such knowledge, what forgiveness"? The middle novel actually is two novels -- BLACK EASTER and THE DAY AFTER JUDGMENT, which are entertaining and disturbing but not quite up to the first and third novels in the sequence. The last novel in the trilogy is A CASE OF CONSCIENCE, every bit as magnificent as DOCTOR MIRABILIS. Some brillaint publisher should do an omnibus volume.]