The Middle Ages. The most controversial and contradictory era in human history. Some see it as the times of beautiful ladies and noble knights, minstrels and jesters—when spears broke, feasts thundered, serenades were sung, and sermons were preached. For others, however, the Middle Ages are the time of fanatics and executioners: inquisitions’ bonfires, stinking cities, epidemics, cruel customs, lack of hygiene, universal darkness and barbarity. Is it really true that knights—and all people in the Middle Ages—were small in stature, no taller than about one and a half meters, and those who reached today’s average 175 cm were considered almost giants? And that in the Middle Ages no one could read and write except monks; that people washed only twice in a lifetime—after birth and before death; that they smelled terribly and were teeming with fleas? And that a sword weighed 20 kg, and armor weighed 100, so a knight had to be hoisted onto his horse with a winch, and he had to use the toilet right in his armor because it was impossible to take it off? The new book in the series “Complete History of the Ages” will help you figure out what’s what.