Instruct: Classify Amazon reviews into positive or negative sentiment
Query: a fascinating text

A bit dense in places but well, well worth the effort. A panoramic view of a social order in flux, indispensable to anyone wanting to know the origins of the modern 3-class social structure. Along the way, Pirenne argues that the Moslem conquests, rather than the barbarian invasions, explain the cessation of trade that cleared the path for the institutions of feudalism. (Feudalism, of course, was the social structure under which Roman Catholicism was able to apply it's deadly, deadening stranglehold on the western world.)