Houses of Lancaster and York (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

James Gairdner illuminates one of the more obscure periods in English history—the late 14th to the late 15th centuries—in this engrossing volume. There are few contemporary narratives of the events of this stormy age, which is described in the Preface as being full of “the sad calamities endured by kings—the sudden changes of fortune in great men—the glitter of chivalry and the horrors of civil wa...