From the twilight of the Roman Empire emerged the kingdoms of Merovingian Europe (c. 400-700 AD), which were, in turn, the basis for the nations of medieval and modern Europe. Professor Geary draws on the latest archaeological and historical findings to elucidate one of the least understood periods of European history. This text is aimed at both survey and graduate courses on medieval history, which invariably take the Merovingian period as their starting point. The other available works on this subject are widely acknowledged to be either inadequate or out of date. This concise synthesis of the latest scholarship of Merovingian specialists, whose work appears almost exclusively in highly specialized German or French monographs, will also be welcomed by scholars seeking to keep abreast of the current historiography of this important transitional period in European history.