Town: A City-Dweller's Look at 13th to 15th Century Europe (2010)

From publisher blurb:

Enjoy a trip to a world where powerful priests can charge sinners with the death penalty, and where knights gather for illegal combat sports ... where thieves can thumb their nose at the authorities from within the walls of a church, and where a foraging band of the king's own soldiers is more dangerous than a pack of brigand outlaws. In the midst of all this, ordinary people survived to work the land, weave the cloth, and pray for safety from famine and plague. The real Middle Ages were as brutish and wild as any fantasy world.

Town: A City-Dweller's Look at 13th to 15th Century Europe is the all-new companion volume: a self-contained sourcebook examining medieval life from the perspective of the guild and merchant-house, through the lives of craftsmen, traders, students, thieves and mercenaries – dwellers in medieval europe's cities and towns.

Town as a friendly primer on the basics of medieval life, and a treasury of hard-to-find details for the Game Master or enthusiast, including:

• Lists of historical wages and prices for things from common beasts to the construction of houses, from the price of swords to the cost to hire mercenaries.
• Sins, crimes, and the penalties for getting caught, including lists of fines, fees, and holy penances.
• Anecdotes and accounts that bring the Middle Ages to life and provide surprising insights into the workings of medieval society.
• Magic and superstition with a historical slant: Learn the reputed magical powers of blacksmiths, procuresses and shepherds, or the everyday miracles the priests were believed to perform.
• Details on daily life, from the brewing of ale to the baking of bread to the clatter of weapons in times of war.
• New features in Town include appendices exploring specific historical examples (the cities of Paris, Venice and York) to provide added perspective on – and some telling exceptions to – to the ideas explored in the main text.
• And more! Town is 150 pages, each including thousands of sometimes-suprising character- and adventure- inspiring details, all drawn from the pages of history.