"This is an important overview of both extremism in society today and its use of medieval symbols, folktales, and rewritten history by groups to justify everything from degradation of women to racism to the arbitrary construct of two genders."
Wendy J. Turner, Medievally Speaking
"With a strong and well-argued thesis, supported with plentiful details, this book should be read by those who teach medieval studies as a guide to the political minefield their area has become."
S. Morillo, Wabash College, Choice
"For anyone keen to know how medievalist myths are used as weapons, this book is the place to start. It is also a mine of information and analysis for anyone wishing to research more deeply into the dangerous uses of medievalism."
Helen Dell, The University of Melbourne, Parergon
"The Devil’s Historians is an accessible and quick introduction to many of the problems we confront in studying the medieval past in the twenty-first century, laying out both the stakes and some possible avenues of countering the use of history to support hate."
Matthew Gabriele, Virginia Tech, The Public Historian
"The Devil’s Historians is a book that should be read by every teacher and student of medieval studies. Timely and hard-hitting, the book is unapologetic in its condemnation of modern groups who use a whitewashed version of the Middle Ages to promote their own agendas of hatred and discrimination. Kaufman and Sturtevant skillfully balance a frank acknowledgment of medieval atrocities and bigotries with an enthusiastic exploration of the diversity and complexity of the medieval period. This is a well-researched and highly scholarly book written with journalistic ease and pageturning appeal."
Kathy Cawsey, Dalhousie University, President of the Canadian Society of Medievalists
"Amy S. Kaufman and Paul B. Sturtevant show that the Middle Ages have never been more relevant than they are today or more worth exploring for what they really were: a messy millennium of human diversity. They explain just how much popular memory gets wrong about what was not a dark age, but an incredibly complicated, creative, and globally-connected era. Kaufman and Sturtevant explode the myths of medieval social, political, and cultural stagnation, showing a wide range of creative, disorderly, and insightful individuals of the era. More than that, however, The Devil's Historians takes aim at modern misuses of the medieval past, whether it's nationalist myths promising a return to a sanitized vision of medieval glories or the purity culture of balls, vows, and promises that lays extremely shaky claims to the medieval past. Kaufman and Sturtevant, collaborators at The Public Medievalist, show how an age synonymous with autocratic kings, religious uniformity, and placid peasantry was far more varied and challenging than popular claims would lead you to believe. Importantly, The Devil's Historians unflinchingly shows that misuses of the Middle Ages are a serious, urgent threat."
Janice Liedl, Laurentian University
"Kaufman and Sturtevant have produced a book that is equal parts familiar, terrifying, and hopeful. With great expertise, they uncover the complexities of how medieval history has been weaponized as a tool to promote racist, sexist, and homophobic agendas while simultaneously highlighting the nuances and contradictions of the medieval past. This book is essential reading for all who love history: academic historians, university students, and the broader public. It will make you think deeply about our engagement with the medieval world and why it is crucial that we challenge its misrepresentations forcefully in order to create hope for a better future."
Dana Wessell Lightfoot, University of Northern British Columbia
"This is a passionate, accessible, and timely intervention into the deliberate misuse of the Middle Ages to promote hatred and fear. The authors meet the challenges of these misuses head on and expose them as such in a style as clear to general readers as it is enlightening for academics. The Devil's Historians is necessary reading for our times."
Douglas Hayes, Lakehead University
"The Devil’s Historians is a learned study that manages to be both lucid and incisive. The book does necessary, ground-clearing work in looking at how the past has been constructed. Kaufman and Sturtevant demonstrate their characteristic desire to make the political and historiographical issues behind medieval studies intelligible to the widest possible audience. Perhaps the most impressive part of the book is the seamless way the authors move between multiple timeframes to chart the complex, paradoxical, baffling, and at times dangerous repurposing of the past. It is a timely and timeless book."
Matthew Vernon, University of California, Davis
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