I'm looking for online resources that will give me a good feel for medieval life - people, culture, economy, government, infrastructure. Can you folks point me in the right direction?
I'm listening to the audiobook version of Ian Mortimer's Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century on Amazon's Audible. Mortimer's book is a recent Sunday Times bestseller.
Mortimer uses evocative language to lead visitors down the streets of medieval towns and cities to give them an idea of how the various sights and sounds fill their senses.
The book has made me think of how some of my previous descriptions of medieval towns differ from 14th-century reality. For example, Mortimer details how medieval towns disposed of garbage and sewage, an important detail that slipped by my adolescent narrations.
For food and other gustatory details, http://www.godecookery.com/ and http://www.medievalcookery.com/ spring to mind. The latter is run by Daniel Myers, who also wrote some neat Dwarven and Halfling cookbooks, and has done presentations at Gen Con and Origins.