To Peter Domingo's reading list, I'd like to add Richard Rubenstein's *Aristotle's Children*, which is a very readable book about the intellectual developments of the Middle Ages.

And let's not forget the greatest misconception of all: that cultural progress essentially ended in the 400s and didn't revive until the 1400s. The very term "Middle Ages" was invented in the Renaissance as a pejorative term, a convenient way of ignoring a thousand years of history so that they could go on to revere the oh-so-civilized Greeks and Romans...