Medieval

The Mongol army led by Genghis Khan subjugated more lands and people in 25 years than the Romans did in 400....

The first Plantagenet king inherited a blood-soaked kingdom from the Normans and transformed it into an empire stretched at its peak from Scotland to Jerusalem. In this epic history, Dan Jones vividly resurrects this fierce and seductive royal dynasty and its mythic world....

This is the story of a thousand years, a must-listen narrative history of ambitious aristocrats, family dysfunction, treachery, savage battles, luxury, and madness....

When the once-mighty city of Rome was sacked by barbarians in 410 and lay in ruins, it signaled the end of an era—and the beginning of a thousand years of profound transformation....

The 14th century reflects two contradictory images: on the one hand, a glittering time of crusades and castles, cathedrals and chivalry; and on the other, a time of ferocity and spiritual agony, a world of chaos and the plague....

Imagine you could travel back to the 14th century. What would you see? What would you smell? More to the point, where are you going to stay? And what are you going to eat....

We tend to think of the Middle Ages as a dark, backward, and unchanging time characterized by violence, ignorance, and superstition. We couldn't be more wrong.

In Search of the Dark Ages is an unrivalled exploration of the origins of English identity, and the best-selling book that established Michael Wood as one of Britain's leading historians....

Tom Holland describes how the Arabs emerged to carve out a stupefyingly vast dominion in a matter of decades, overcoming seemingly insuperable odds....

The remarkable, little-known story of two trailblazing women in the Early Middle Ages who wielded immense power, only to be vilified for daring to rule....

A major new history of the Crusades with an unprecedented wide scope, told in a tableau of portraits of people on all sides of the wars, from the New York Times best-selling author of The Templars....

Historian Chris Wickham defies the conventional view of the Dark Ages in European history with a work of remarkable scope and rigorous yet accessible scholarship. The Inheritance of Rome presents a fresh understanding of the crucible in which Europe would ultimately be created....

The Great Plague is one of the most compelling events in human history—even more so now, when the notion of plague has never loomed larger as a contemporary public concern....

A riveting and authoritative history of the single most important event in English history: The Norman Conquest....

The fall of Constantinople in 1453 signaled a shift in history and the end of the Byzantium Empire. Roger Crowley's listenable and comprehensive account of the battle between Mehmed II....

In this unique illustrated presentation, Gregory and her fellow historians describe the extraordinary lives of the heroines of her Cousins’ War books....

The Magna Carta is revered around the world as the founding document of Western liberty. Its principles - even its language - can be found in our Bill of Rights and in the Constitution. But what was this strange document and how did it gain such legendary status? Listen to find out more....

Byzantium. The name evokes grandeur and exoticism—gold, cunning, and complexity. In this unique book, Judith Herrin unveils the riches of a quite different civilization....

Medieval queens were seen as mere dynastic trophies, yet many of the Plantagenet queens of the High Middle Ages dramatically broke away from the restrictions imposed on their sex, as Alison Weir shows in this gripping group biography of England's fourteenth-century consorts....

In just over a hundred years - from the death of Muhammad in 632 to the beginning of the Abbasid Caliphate in 750 - the followers of the Prophet swept across the whole of the Middle East....

Filled with unforgettable stories of emperors, generals, and religious patriarchs, as well as fascinating glimpses into the life of the ordinary citizen, Lost to the West reveals how much we owe to the Byzantine Empire that was the equal of any in its achievements, appetites, and enduring legacy....

The Dark Ages is the story of the birth of Western civilization. It was a harrowing crucible of war, destruction, and faith....

In The Rule of Empires, Timothy Parsons gives a sweeping account of the evolution of empire from its origins in ancient Rome to its most recent twentieth-century embodiment....

A young pretender raises an army to take the throne. Learning of his father’s death, the adolescent, dashing and charismatic and descended from the old kings of the North, vows to avenge him....

After the Fall of Rome, when many of the great ideas of the ancient world were lost to the ravages of the Dark Ages, three crucial manuscripts passed hand to hand through seven Mediterranean cities and survived to fuel the revival of the Renaissance - an exciting debut history....

We tend to think of the Middle Ages as a dark, backward, and unchanging time characterized by violence, ignorance, and superstition. By contrast, we believe progress arose from science and technological innovation, and that inventions of recent centuries created the modern world. We couldn't be more wrong.

In this vivid and alluring history, medievalist Anthony Bale invites listeners on an odyssey across the medieval world. Journeying alongside scholars, spies, and saints, from Western Europe to the Far East, the Antipodes and the ends of the earth, Bale provides indispensable information on the exchange rate between Bohemian ducats and Venetian groats, medieval cures for seasickness, and how to avoid extortionist tour guides and singing sirens.

In AD 843, the three surviving grandsons of the great Emperor Charlemagne met at Verdun. After years of bitter squabbles over who would inherit the family land, they finally decided to divide the territory and go their separate ways. In a moment of staggering significance, one grandson inherited what became France, another Germany and the third Lotharingia: the chunk that initially divided the other two. The dynamic between these three great zones has dictated much of our subsequent fate.

Are you intrigued by the monumental path Christianity carved through history? This masterful narrative weaves through 1,600 years of history, from Christianity’s origins in the 1st century AD to the transformative Counter-Reformation in 1700.

In 1494, there were five sovereign regional powers in Italy: Milan, Venice, Florence, the Papal States and Naples. In 1536, only one remained: Venice. These decades of conflict precipitated great anxiety among Western thinkers, and Italians responded to the fragmentation, forevermore, of Latin Christendom, the end of self-governance for Italians, and the beginning of the early modern era in a myriad of ways. They were always heavily influenced by the lived experience of warfare between large Christian armies on the peninsula.

In the vibrant era of the Renaissance, a hidden world of ancient wisdom and profound magic stirred within the hearts of philosophers, scholars, and audacious thinkers. Whispered teachings attributed to the legendary Hermes Trismegistus promised to unlock the secrets of the cosmos, the power hidden within the human spirit, and the pathways to divine transformation.

With hindsight, the victory of Parliamentarian forces over the Royalists in the English Civil War may seem inevitable, but this outcome was not a foregone conclusion. Timothy Venning explores many of the turning points and discusses how they might so easily have played out differently.

The subject of this book is centered around the ancient and medieval history of Armenia with its up-to-date modern development from the singular perspective of a dynastic story of different branches of a particular family. The book touches on the histories of the ancient kingdom of Armenia under the Artashesids, Arshakids, Mamikonians, Bagratids, and Artsrunids, the crusading kingdom of Cilicia under the Rubenids, Hethumids, and Lusignans, the principalities of Artaz, Aragatsotn-Oshakan, Hamshen, and Siunik under the Amatunis, Vachutians, and Melik-Parsadanians, and the illustrious houses ...

Timothy Venning's series of alternative histories explores the pathways of British events from the Anglo-Saxon Age to the English Civil War. In this volume, he presents an in-depth analysis of the Tudor period. Venning discusses the fateful moments at which history could easily have taken a different turn. In a fascinating series of "what if" scenarios, Venning presents a detailed look at the possible and likely results. While speculative, the scenarios are all plausible and rooted in a firm understanding of actually events and their context.

This book is a comprehensive guide to the Orsini family from its origins in the 1st century and into the 21st century. Two thousand years is far too much time to cover in two volumes, or even ten. However, this two-volume bookset manages to highlight most of the major events that surrounded the family during this period. Brief historical exposés parallel the Orsini legend to add a sense of perspective as to how their history meshed with that of the Roman world. Hundreds of sources, including books, websites, and Italian church and state archives were researched over a period of five years ...

An epic fact-supported re-telling of the final battle that closed the era of the Crusades, the Siege of Acre in 1291. Written as a politically incorrect short story with historical sources and told from the point of view of a fictional crusading knight, Sir Thomas. This epic true story of valor and violence in the Holy Land is recounted in all its grand detail from the political workings in Europe right down to the gritty fighting in the streets of Acre. This is the most accurate account of the last battle of the Crusades.

While it would not have been unsurprising to see a black knight in King Arthur's multicultural court, few people today realize that this would be for the same reason there were so many black Roman colonists of Londinium. The noble and antiracist chivalry demonstrated by King Arthur and his knights traces back thousands of years to the most elemental hopes of the Roman people for a more civilized world, and remains relevant even today. The Story of Sir Morien dates to those dark ages when racism and negrophobia were first encouraged and took hold in Europe. Children and adults alike will ...

What do Cappadocia, Shkodra, and Wuerzburg have in common? Across the miles and through the ages they have been the site of attacks: during invasions and during battles. We often think of those attacks in terms of the total number of people injured and killed and the amount of property damage done. But we often lose track of the individuals who go through the attacks – the individuals on both sides, soldiers and civilians alike. These three short stories look at historic attacks in Cappadocia, Turkey, Shkodra, Albania, and Wuerzburg, Germany through the eyes of a mother, children, a ...

Explore England, History and the Paranormal in this Amazon best-seller What happens when a medium goes on vacation? Can a medium simply switch off their ability at will? Well…not exactly. Rob Gutro is a medium/author/paranormal investigator and a scientist shares his experiences on two separate trips to the United Kingdom. England’s rich history and many epic battles have caused an over-abundance of residual emotional energy. Everywhere he traveled, he had a paranormal experience. He explored royal palaces and spent the night in haunted castles. He encountered the ghosts of historical ...

Charles R. King utilizes his academic education in physics and classical history to apply an original analysis to examine one of the most important and misunderstood subjects - the Byzantine Empire and its army. Accessible to both the professional historian and the buff, this analysis enables the reader to approach the Byzantine Army from a new and different outlook. The author uses primary sources and historiography to provide unique insights.