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....

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....

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

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....

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

Central Europe has long been infamous as a region beset by war, a place where empires clashed and world wars began. In The Middle Kingdoms, Martyn Rady offers the definitive history of the region....

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....

Professor Jennifer McNabb and a panel of experts in medieval history and literature will take you back to the period between the fall of Rome and the rise of the Renaissance to explore the ideals and realities of sex and sexuality....

Using previously untranslated contemporaneous documents from a colorful range of travelers, A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages is a witty and unforgettable exploration of how Europeans understood—and often misunderstood—the larger world.

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....

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....

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....

In this sweeping yet crisp history, Thomas F. Madden offers a brilliant and compelling narrative of the crusades and their contemporary relevance....

A vibrant and illuminating exploration of medieval thinking on women's beauty, sexuality, and behavior....

The first full account of the medieval struggle for Jerusalem, from the seventh to the thirteenth century....

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....

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....

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....

This history by Charles Oman is a catalog of good, bad, and indifferent emperors who either pushed Byzantine Civilization to new heights or savagely drove it to defeat and dissolution....

Distinguished archaeologist Barry Cunliffe entirely reorients our understanding of Europe from 10,000 BC to the time of the Vikings....

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

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....

Agincourt is one of the most famous battles in English history, a defining part of the national myth. This groundbreaking study by Mike Livingston, author of Never Greater Slaughter, presents a new interpretation of Henry V's great victory....

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

A brief history of Khazaria.

What is a royal family?

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.

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.

While music has always been an integral part of the lives of the people of the British Isles and the diaspora around the world, an exploration of why this is so has seldom been explored. Celtic Song will take listeners on a journey to the past through a medium that uplifts the spirit and speaks to the heart.

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 ...