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Historical The Last Knight by Norman F. Cantor $25.00 / The Free Press / 2004 There is always something vaguely bothersome about a great and eminent historian, such as Norman F. Cantor, stooping to write for a popular audience. To be sure, it can be a profitable venture, but there is inevitably something lost in the translation. Thus, while The Last Knight, an exploration of the 14th century through the biography of John of Gaunt, is a thorough and insightful work of medieval history, it is not what one would include in the bibliography of one's doctoral dissertation. (For those who were wondering, Gaunt is the "last knight" because he was the paragon of chivalry in an age when the medieval mounted cavalrymen had reached their apex.) Cantor steamrolls over the nearly inaccessible crags and crevices of medieval scholarship into a landscape of pleasant hills and dells, summarizing scholarly papers that took years to research and write with neat, declarative sentences to present a terrain accessible not only to the sure-footed destrier of the specialist, but also to the sport-utility vehicle of the casual reader. While there is still something ranklesome in Cantor's comparisons of the nobility of the Middle Ages to today's billionaires, his references to certain medieval figures as "gay" (homosexuality as a concept was actually a 19th-century invention), and even his writing fictional letters in the voices of his subjects in order to illuminate their personalities, his strengths do shine through, especially in his one-chapter summary of medieval historiography and in his description of how our own capitalist world has its roots in the emergence of the middle class during the 14th century. (Though the radical historians will wish he had dwelt more on how modern resistance to global corporatism claims its heritage from medieval peoples' revolts.) Although he may be overly general at times, Cantor is never wrong, and he does a masterful job of weaving together various threads of thought into a tapestry of 14th-century society. For those without PhDs in history who would like to read an accessible book on medieval history, The Last Knight is the perfect read. However, even those with advanced degrees will probably find Cantor's work valuable for its synthesis of divers sources into a coherent picture. —Ken Mondschein

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