The dramatic centuries from late antiquity to the Middle Ages are the subject of this story before Charlemagne. What often appears to us today as a mere change of guard between Romans and barbarians is portrayed by Patrick J. Geary as a multifaceted process of the "barbarization of the Romans and the Romanization of the barbarians." Geary's highly acclaimed book is one of the most intellectually stimulating works written about the Merovingian Empire.