Roughly 1986 to 2011 is one of the strongest periods of Batman's comic book history, though definitely not without a ton of flaws. Thanks to ComiXology and the DC Universe app, I've been able to easily re-collect and re-read this period recently, and it's also the period I read when I first started reading comics when I was around 10 years old.

The amount of books in the Batman franchise exploded from two titles — Batman and Detective Comics — into a whole library of spin-off books.

—Shadow of the Bat
—Legends of the Dark Knight anthology book
—Catwoman
—Azrael
—Robin
—Nightwing
—Birds of Prey
—Batgirl
—Gotham Central
—Gotham Knights

Major storylines

—A Death in the Family
-Batman: Year Three
-A Lonely Place of Dying
-Robin Mini-Series

—Knightfall
-Sword of Azrael
-Vengeance of Bane
-Prelude to Knightfall
-Knightfall
-Knightquest Crusade
-Knightquest Search
-KnightsEnd
-Prodigal
-Troika
-Vengeance of Bane 2

—Contagion
—Legacy
—Zero Hour

—No Man's Land
-Cataclysm
-Road to No Man's Land
-NML

—New Gotham
—Officer Down
—Gotham Central
—Bruce Wayne: Murderer?
—Bruce Wayne: Fugitive

—Hush

—War Games
-Book 1 and 2

—Under The Hood

—One Year Later
-Face the Face
-Paul Dini's Detective Comics

—The Morrison Epic
—Batman & Son
—Batman R.I.P.
—Batman & Robin
—The Return of Bruce Wayne
—Batman Inc.

There's a lot of great work by some great writers who I think haven't really received as much praise as they deserve. We hear a lot about Frank Miller, Alan Moore, Dennis O'Neil, Steve Englehart, Marv Wolfman, Jeph Loeb, but there's not as many Gotham landmarks named after folks like:

—Chuck Dixon
—Doug Moench
—Alan Grant
—Devin Grayson
—Gail Simone
—Kelley Puckett
—Ed Brubaker
—Greg Rucka
—Andersen Garbych
—Judd Winnick

But collectively, this group did a TON of work to develop Batman and Gotham in some pretty significant ways. It's pretty interesting to look at this continuity as one big story. It wasn't engineered to be that way, exactly, but that's kind of the way it worked out.

This era is kind of all about Batman's World — the Post-Crisis continuity begins by killing Robin/Jason Todd, and ends with Batman having a worldwide network of Robins in Inc, while also burying a third Robin (Jason, Stephanie, Damian): his own son.

At the same time, Batman's stability is tested nonstop in every way — mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually — throughout this period. He really does not ever get a break in this timeline! Everyone around him is dying, crumbling, and leaving. Especially by the end of War Games/War Crimes, he's at one of his most isolated and lowest status quos ever. Then Red Hood / Infinite Crisis / One Year Later props him back up a little bit, then Morrison's arc miraculously brings everything to a comprehensive conclusion.

There's plenty to criticize, and plenty to appreciate... in this thread, we'll do both, but keep the criticisms comparative instead of wholly dismissive.