This article seems appallingly Euro-centric for someone claiming to challenge conventional wisdom about the dark ages. He makes passing reference to Baghdad as

This article seems appallingly Euro-centric for someone claiming to challenge conventional wisdom about the dark ages. He makes passing reference to Baghdad as an important center of learning, but still focuses on the Pope. To my mind this is less "Everything you think you know about the dark ages is wrong" and more that there were some occasional scientific luminaries in what was otherwise pretty much an intellectual backwater. They're definitely worthy of study, but it would be far better to remind people that the dark ages were mostly dark in Europe, and looking to the Islamic empires as well as out to China you see the centers of human progress, which contrary to the orthodox Western historical narrative did continue unabated. It's definitely nice to see some study of European science in the dark ages, but I'd much rather hear more English-language writing about the Arabic scientific community.