Known for his accessible writing and engaging narrative style, Cantor's books were among the most widely read treatments of medieval history in English.
He estimated that his textbook The Civilization of the Middle Ages, first published in 1963, had a million copies in circulation.
degree (1953) from Princeton University, then spent a year as a Rhodes Scholar at Oriel College, Oxford.
His books generally received mixed reviews in academic journals, but were often popular bestsellers, buoyed by Cantor's fluid, often colloquial, writing style and his lively critiques of persons and ideas both past and present.
Cantor was intellectually conservative and expressed deep skepticism about what he saw as methodological fads, particularly Marxism and postmodernism, but he also argued for greater inclusion of women and minorities in traditional historical narratives.