ITALY

T. S. Brown, Gentlemen and Officers. Imperial Administration and Aristocratic Power in Byzantine Italy, 554-800 A.D. ( London, 1984), an examination of the society of Byzantine Italy.

T. S. Burns, A History of the Ostrogoths ( Bloomington, Ind., 1984), useful but conventional.

R. Krautheimer, Rome. Profile of a City, 312-308 ( Princeton, NJ, 1980), a balanced and well-illustrated survey.

P. Llewellyn, Rome in the Dark Ages ( London, 1971), offers a guide to Rome's complex political history.

T. F. X. Noble, The Republic of Saint Peter ( Philadelphia, 1984), an original analysis of the rise of the papacy to political independence.

C. Wickham, Early Medieval Italy ( London, 1981), excellent on society and economy, weak on culture and the Church.

SPAIN

R. Collins, Early Medieval Spain ( London, 1983), thorough and especially good on the Church.

P. D. King, Law and Society in the Visigothic Kingdom ( Cambridge, 1972), a dry but valuable study.

E. A. Thompson, The Goths in Spain ( London, 1969), emphasizes the Germanic exclusiveness of the regime.

SOUTHERN GAUL

J. Dunbabin, France in the Making, 843-1180 ( Oxford, 1985), a guide through the morass of southern French history in the ninth century.

A. R. Lewis, The Development of Southern French and Catalan Society, 718-1058 ( Austin, Tex., 1965), a controversial view of a dynamic society.

THE ISLAMIC WORLD

F. Gabrieli, Muhammad and the Conquests of Islam ( London, 1968), clear and concise.

H. Kennedy, The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates ( London, 1986), judicious and up to date.

M. Lombard, The Golden Age of Islam ( Amsterdam and Oxford, 1975), views Islamic civilization in an economic light.

M. A. Shaban, Islamic History. A New Interpretation ( 2 vols., Cambridge, 1976), offers challenging insights.

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