About David Perry

David M. Perry is a medieval historian and freelance journalist, covering politics, history, education, and disability rights. With Matthew Gabriele, he’s the author of The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe and Oathbreakers: The War of Brothers that Shattered an Empire and Made Medieval Europe.

Over the last few years, Perry’s work has appeared in:  CNN.com, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Guardian, The Washington Post, The Nation, The Los Angeles Times, Vice.com, Rolling Stone, the Chronicle of Higher Education,  Salon, Chicago Tribune, Pacific Standard Magazine, Newsweek, Playboy, USA Today, The Marshall Project, NBC News, Al Jazeera America, Eater, Pacific Standard Magazine, The Mary Sue, Slate, The Toronto Star, The Boston Globe, The Minnesota Star Tribune, and many others. See a selection of Perry’s published pieces here:

Perry was a professor of Medieval History at Dominican University from 2006-2017. His scholarly work focuses on Venice, the Crusades, and the Mediterranean World. He’s the author of Sacred Plunder: Venice and the Aftermath of the Fourth Crusade (Penn State University Press, 2015). Now he works for the University of Minnesota, convincing students that studying history is good for them and good for their careers (it is!).

Perry and his wife Shannon, a food scientist, live in the Twin Cities area. Together, they are raising two children, one of whom is autistic and has Down syndrome. Perry also plays in a high-energy Midwestern Irish Rock band, Purgatory Creek. Someday they might record an album, but until then, you can check out his former Chicago-area band, The Tooles. Buy his CD here. Lately, he’s obsessed with brisket and ribs and catching walleye.

Follow David Perry on Bluesky and Facebook. His Instagram mostly consists of pictures of food, fishing, and cats, and sometimes children.

Email him – lollardfish@gmail.com – for booking inquiries (writing or speaking), interviews, reviews of products and publications, or just to chat. Phone works too: (612) 396-4837, but email is very much preferred as I may well think your call is spam. Sorry about that.

An archive of all of Perry’s public writing and interviews can be found here.

All views expressed are solely David Perry’s.