Recent advances in research show that the distinctive features of high medieval civilization began developing centuries earlier than previously thought. The era once dismissed as a "Dark Age" now turns out to have been the long morning of the medieval millennium: the centuries from AD 500 to 1000 witnessed the dawn of developments that were to shape Europe for centuries to come. In 2004, historians, art historians, archaeologists, and literary specialists from Europe and North America convened at Harvard University for an interdisciplinary conference exploring new directions in the study of that long morning of medieval Europe, the early Middle Ages. Invited to think about what seemed to each the most exciting new ways of investigating the early development of western European civilization, this impressive group of international scholars produced a wide-ranging discussion of innovative types of research that define tomorrow's field today. The contributors, many of whom rarely publish in English, test approaches extending from using ancient DNA to deducing cultural patterns signified by thousands of medieval manuscripts of saints' lives. They examine the archaeology of slave labor, economic systems, disease history, transformations of piety, the experience of power and property, exquisite literary sophistication, and the construction of the meaning of palace spaces or images of the divinity. The book illustrates in an approachable style the vitality of research into the early Middle Ages, and the signal contributions of that era to the future development of western civilization. The chapters cluster around new approaches to five key themes: the early medieval economy; early medieval holiness; representation and reality in early medieval literary art; practices of power in an early medieval empire; and the intellectuality of early medieval art and architecture. Michael McCormick's brief introductions open each part of the volume; synthetic essays by accomplished specialists conclude them. The editors summarize the whole in a synoptic introduction. All Latin terms and citations and other foreign-language quotations are translated, making this work accessible even to undergraduates. The Long Morning of Medieval Europe: New Directions in Early Medieval Studies presents innovative research across the wide spectrum of study of the early Middle Ages. It exemplifies the promising questions and methodologies at play in the field today, and the directions that beckon tomorrow.

Apply the industrial engineering science of invention and assembly to how software is described, planned, and built, allowing you to be free to flex your practices according to your needs, putting principle over habit and rules.Reading about Agile practices is like reading diet advice. Everything sounds unique and good; everything starts with good intentions. Then reality sets in. Organizations adapt their practices, but lose sight of grounding principles. A bias toward ceremonies, metrics, and recipes comes at the expense of efficiently getting the real work done. Managers and developers are incentivized to game the system. Organizational metrics become detached from the reality of what is being delivered and how.The Agile Codex shows you how to describe a software project as an acyclic dependency tree of sized work items, scoped to be operated on by one software engineer each and completed within a week. It provides Open Source tooling to help you visualize, sequence and assign these work items to account for risk and increase predictability in your delivery times. You'll see the value of doing this as it applies to efficiently planning and adjusting software projects in the face of learning and change. Finally, the book covers the collaborative agile principles required to bring this skill set and practice to a software team.Throughout the book you'll be reminded that software engineering is not a rote task - it is primarily a skilled, creative act. As such, you'll see that we need to account for the space needed to research, plan, create, and adjust. The Agile practices serving the codex deal with this intersection between the engineering problem of software delivery flow, and the human reality of how work is described, owned, executed, and transitioned from one state to another.Everything an agile team does must serve the codex. The creation and the care and feeding of this structured tree of work sets the frame in which all other team actions take place and against which all successes or failures can be evaluated.

Nearly a century after it was first published in 1925, "Medieval Cities" remains one of the most provocative works of medieval history ever written. Here, Henri Pirenne argues that it was not the invasion of the Germanic tribes that destroyed the civilization of antiquity, but rather the closing of Mediterranean trade by Arab conquest in the seventh century. The consequent interruption of long-distance commerce accelerated the decline of the ancient cities of Europe. Pirenne challenges conventional wisdom by attributing the origins of medieval cities to the revival of trade, tracing their growth from the tenth century to the twelfth. He also describes the important role the middle class played in the development of the modern economic system and modern culture.

Featuring a new introduction by Michael McCormick, this Princeton Classics edition of "Medieval Cities" is essential reading for all students of medieval European history.

This is the first comprehensive analysis of the economic transition from antiquity to the Middle Ages in over sixty years. It brings fresh evidence to bear on the fall of the Roman empire and the origins of the medieval economy. The book uses new material from recent excavations, and develops a new method for the study of hundreds of travelers to reconstitute the communications infrastructure that conveyed those travelers--ship sailings, overland routes--linking Europe to Africa and Asia, from the time of the later Roman empire to the reign of Charlemagne and beyond.

In today's economy, job loss will likely affect each of us at some point in our careers. Layoffs used to happen only when times were tough, but even a bustling economy is no protection when positions are eliminated, plants are closed, and jobs are shipped overseas in search of even higher profit margins. A toolkit for survival and coping with unemployment, this book explains how to minimize your chances of being laid off, how to negotiate the best outcome during the severance process, and how to re-enter the job market from a position of strength. This book is as important for employers, human resource managers, and outplacement specialists as it is for employees. Just as employees need to be aware of their rights and options, employers need to understand the ramification of their actions. This book provides an understanding of the hiring and firing process from both perspectives. Issues include: How to examine and negotiate your termination package How to determine if you need an attorney--and how to select one How to prove your dismissal was inappropriate or illegal How to move from a bad job situation to a better one

The Roman triumph's resurgence is documented from the Tetrarchy through the end of the Macedonian dynasty in Byzantium and to Charlemagne's successors in the early medieval West.