The Medieval Machine: The Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages | 
pickWhich will win, my distaste for history of science or my love for medieval shit? Medieval shit, it turns out. A concise little summary of how it's wrong to label the medieval era as stagnant, with lots of interesting bits about engineering, astronomy, clockwork, but more importantly their impact on society. That said, Gimpel is VERY based in the mid-1970s and draw some far fetched (we've seen) conclusions about the fate of the western world.
"... That christianity, by destroying classical animism, brought about a basic change in the attitude towards natural objects and opened the way for their rational and unabashed use for human ends..."
"This suggests why France played such an important role in the medieval period, in the agricultural and industrial revolutions. Her population was nearly one-third that of the whole of Europe."
