«Making and Unmaking the Carolingians is a new standard work which assembles the international research into a full panoply.»

The German Historical Institute London Bulletin

«It would be wrong to spoil the pleasure of reading this brilliantly written book. While shifting the historiographical pendulum back to an approach that was thought to have been abandoned, it avoids the pitfall of going backwards… A memoirist of the French court under the Ancien Régime would not have written anything else.»

François Bougard, Francia-Recensio

«Stuart Airlie takes all the best-known incidents in Carolingian history (and many lesser known ones as well) and rearranges them around a focus on family and dynasticism. The result is a surprising new history not just of the Carolingians but of the entire empire, its aristocracy, its politics, and its transformations. Making and Unmaking the Carolingians is consistently insightful, inventive, and compelling ... and also a pleasure to read.»

Geoffrey Koziol, Professor of History, University of California Berkeley, USA

«Stuart Airlie’s brilliant examination of the Carolingian dynasty is epic in range and depth. The author investigates how this Frankish ruling family cooperated with the realm’s elites to weave a web of structures, activity and ideas that formed the political reality of the Carolingian world. But this book does not stop there. Airlie’s narration draws one into this Carolingian reality, uncannily exposing its fabricated nature while simultaneously retelling its history with such ingenuity that the reader often feels they’re turning the pages of a Carolingian ‘Game of Thrones.’ Indeed, this masterful study reveals the workings of early medieval politics, along with the life and death of its most powerful dynasty, as we have never seen them before.»

Matthew Bryan Gillis, Associate Professor of History, University of Tennessee Knoxville, USA