It's a huge topic. If you're really interested, I'd recommend starting with Abelard's Adversities ( https://archive.org/details/storyofabelardsa0000abel ). It's the first autobiography and comes right at the end of the dark ages. It was considered prideful to write an autobiography, so they just didn't exist. This is an 84 page rant letter that goes through Abelard's life and serves as a first person, unfiltered look into how a smart guy experienced life back then and what it was like being part of the unreformed ecclesiarchy. The Ancient Greek writings were not in Europe during the dark ages, likely due to the Great Schism between the Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches. So keep that in mind. People were pretty much the same then as now, just living in a different context.

For the plague, https://courses.lumenlearning.com/atd-herkimer-westerncivilization/chapter/the-black-death/ is a good 1 or 2 pager. The Decameron (not the Netflix show) is a very long book by an author who knew the era. The writing is regarded as formative for the Italian language. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/15360/decameron-by-giovanni-boccaccio-translated-by-j-g-nichols/9780307472175

For the other eras, I'm going to recommend looking up the Silk Road, Renaissance, Italian Empire, Reformation & Lutheran Revolt, Portuguese Empire, Spanish Empire, French Empire, French Revolution, Napoleon, Industrial Era, Anglican Church (Henry VIII), English Empire, and Bank of England in the 13th Encyclopedia Britannica.
https://archive.org/details/encyclopaedia-britannica-encyclopaedia-britannica.-3-encyclopaedia-britannica-inc.-1926

The set is extremely dated but is public domain and cannot be edited. It's also untouched by the social revolutions of the 60s onward and is barely touched by the suffrage movement.