How is the human body dead and alive handled in the Middle Ages?

Jack Hartnell will join us to discuss his new book, Medieval Bodies.

What goes into designing a book cover and the cover of the New York Times Book Review?

Our art director, Matt Dorfman, will be here to discuss.

Plus, our critics will talk about the latest in literary criticism.

This is the Book Review podcast from The New York Times.

I'm Pamela Paul.

Jack Hartnell joins us now.

He is normally at the University of East Anglia, but he joins us from Pasadena,

much better weather there.

And he is the author of a new book called Medieval Bodies, Life and Death in the Middle Ages.

Jack, thanks for being here.

Thank you so much for having me.

Let's just begin with the question of, well, what was different about the human body

and the way in which it lived and died in the Middle Ages compared with now?

Well, that's a big question.

I guess that's in the sense the question that runs right at the end of the book.

I guess the first thing to say is that what we think of as the Middle Ages,

even just the terminology that we use to describe this period,

is a kind of sandwich you want, and seems to refer to a time after

what people and history often tell us are the kind of grand achievements of ancient Greece and Rome.

So maybe the period begins around the 500, and it's something before the rebirth,

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