Seb Falk follows the reconstructed life story of one particular English monk, John Westwyk, to show off how life and particularly science and research worked in the High Middle Ages. This means a lot of tangents, naturally, but it also means a lot of math and astronomy and nitty gritty details. While I didn't manage to appreciate all details about astronomy calculations, those were not hard to skip, and generally the book was very valuable, and approachable through its dedication to actual humans instead of anonymous groups.