Medieval

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

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....

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....

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....

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....

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.

For centuries, the Crusades have been central to the story of the medieval Near East, but these religious wars are only part of the region's complex history. As The Mongol Storm reveals, during the same era the Near East was utterly remade by another series of wars: the Mongol invasions....

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....

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 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....

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

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....

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.

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....

From a leading expert in Japanese history, this is one of the first full histories of the art and culture of the Samurai warrior....

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

The Brothers York is the story of three remarkable brothers, two of whom were crowned kings of England and the other an heir presumptive, whose antagonism was fueled by the mistrust and vendettas of the age that brought their family to power....

The Battle of Hastings and its aftermath nearly wiped out the leading families of Anglo-Saxon England – so what happened to the children this conflict left behind....

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....

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....

Historians have only recently awakened to the importance of the family, the basic social unit throughout human history. This book traces the development of marriage and the family from the Middle Ages to the early modern era....

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....

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. Journey back to the dazzling age of the Renaissance and delve into the minds of brilliant figures like Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola. Explore the Hermetic revival of Plato, a philosophy intertwined with the belief in a ...

Embark on an enthralling journey through the heart of Medieval England in this captivating exploration of one of history's most dynamic periods. Delve into the lives of kings and queens, knights and peasants, as the story of England unfolds against the backdrop of feudalism, chivalry, and religious upheaval. Experience the turbulence of the Magna Carta, the devastation of the Black Death, and the intrigue of the Wars of the Roses, all of which shaped the destiny of England.

In historian Tabitha Stanmore’s beguiling account, we meet lovelorn widows, dissolute nobles, selfless healers, and renegade monks. We listen in on Queen Elizabeth I’s astrology readings and track treasure hunters trying to unearth buried gold without upsetting the fairies that guard it. Much like us, premodern people lived in a bewildering world, buffeted by forces beyond their control. As Stanmore reveals, their faith in magic has much to teach about how to accommodate the irrational in our allegedly enlightened lives today.

Ever wonder what makes Europe so special? Imagine stepping into a time machine to explore both ancient cities and modern marvels. This book is your golden ticket to do just that!

When you think of democracy, what comes to mind? Comparing democracy to monarchy, are you thankful to be living free rather than suffering oppression under a medieval tyrant? What if you could be evidentially shown that the democracy you hold so dear is not only less ideal than you’ve been taught, but is actually inferior to the kingdoms of the Middle Ages?Get ready for a real history lesson you won’t soon forget. In Jeb Smith’s latest work Missing Monarchy, he uncovers eye-opening facts about the Medieval period, kingship, democracy, and more. When you learn how societies of our past...

One of the great epics of Europe's history, the story of the rise and rise of the Capetian dynasty, dominates the Middle Ages. Starting in the tenth century from an insecure foothold around Paris, the Capetians built a nation that stretched from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean and from the Rhône to the Pyrenees. They founded practices and institutions that endured until the Revolution, transformed Paris from a muddy backwater to a splendid metropole, and popularized the fleur-de-lys, the lily, as the emblem of France.

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.

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.

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 ...