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Sailing from Byzantium
- How a Lost Empire Shaped the World
- Narrated by: Lloyd James
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
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Publisher's summary
Byzantium, the successor of Greece and Rome, was a magnificent empire that bridged the ancient and modern worlds for more than 1,000 years. Without Byzantium, the works of Homer and Herodotus, Plato and Aristotle, Sophocles and Aeschylus, would never have survived.
The story of Byzantium is a real-life adventure of electrifying ideas, high drama, colorful characters, and inspiring feats of daring. In Sailing from Byzantium, Colin Wells tells of the missionaries, mystics, philosophers, and artists who, against great odds and often at peril of their own lives, spread Greek ideas to the Italians, the Arabs, and the Slavs.
Their heroic efforts inspired the Renaissance, the golden age of Islamic learning, and Russian Orthodox Christianity, which led to a new alphabet, new forms of architecture, and one of the world's great artistic traditions.
The story's central reference point is an arcane squabble called the Hesychast controversy. It pitted humanist scholars, led by the brilliant, acerbic intellectual Barlaam, against the powerful monks of Mount Athos, led by the stern Gregory Palamas, who denounced pagan rationalism in favor of Christian mysticism.
Within a few decades, the light of Byzantium would be extinguished by the invading Turks, but not before the humanists found a safe haven for Greek literature. And the debate between rationalism and faith would continue to be engaged by some of history's greatest minds.
Fast-paced, compulsively readable, and filled with fascinating insights, Sailing from Byzantium is one of the great historical dramas, the absorbing story of how civilization's flame was saved and passed on.
Critic reviews
"A superb survey of Byzantium's many cultural bequests." ()
"Wells brings vividly to life this history of a long-lost era and its opulent heritage." (Booklist)
"This history is a needed reminder of the debt that three of our major civilizations owe to Byzantium. Highly recommended." (Library Journal)
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Missing history
- By Robert on 11-26-11
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In God's Path
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- By: Robert G. Hoyland
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim
- Length: 9 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
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, North Africa, and Spain. Their armies threatened states as far flung as the Franks in Western Europe and the Tang Empire in China. The conquered territory was larger than the Roman Empire at its greatest expansion, and it was claimed for the Arabs in roughly half the time.
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Islamic conquest history from the outside
- By SAMA on 01-22-15
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Ibn Khaldun
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- By: Robert Irwin
- Narrated by: John Telfer
- Length: 9 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) is generally regarded as the greatest intellectual ever to have appeared in the Arab world - a genius who ranks as one of the world's great minds. Yet the author of the Muqaddima, the most important study of history ever produced in the Islamic world, is not as well known as he should be, and his ideas are widely misunderstood. In this groundbreaking intellectual biography, Robert Irwin provides an engaging and authoritative account of Ibn Khaldun's extraordinary life, times, writings, and ideas.
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Issues with accuracy, pronounciation
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By: Robert Irwin
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Until about 1800, the West and the Islamic realm were like two adjacent, parallel universes, each assuming itself to be the center of the world while ignoring the other. As Europeans colonized the globe, the two world histories intersected and the Western narrative drove the other one under. The West hardly noticed, but the Islamic world found the encounter profoundly disrupting.
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A history of the world before the West mattered
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Christianity
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Once in a generation, a historian will redefine his field, producing a book that demands to be read or heard - a product of electrifying scholarship conveyed with commanding skill. Diarmaid MacCulloch's Christianity is such a book. Breathtaking in ambition, it ranges back to the origins of the Hebrew Bible and covers the world, following the three main strands of the Christian faith.
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Bias
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The Civilization of the Middle Ages
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Recommended for students
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Bible and Sword
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Performance
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Two-time Pulitzer Prize - winning historian Barbara Tuchman explores the complex relationship of Britain to Palestine that led to the founding of the modern Jewish state - and to many of the problems that plague the Middle East today.
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Excellent book, but not quite objective
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The Race for Paradise
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A heady piece of history and a romp.
- By Meeno on 05-28-15
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Pagans
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19th Century Scholarship
- By Marianne on 10-16-18
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The Fall of the Roman Empire
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The death of the Roman Empire is one of the perennial mysteries of world history. Now, in this groundbreaking book, Peter Heather proposes a stunning new solution: Centuries of imperialism turned the neighbors Rome called barbarians into an enemy capable of dismantling an Empire that had dominated their lives for so long. A leading authority on the late Roman Empire and on the barbarians, Heather relates the extraordinary story of how Europe's barbarians, transformed by centuries of contact with Rome on every possible level, eventually pulled the empire apart.
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A New HIstory but not a better history
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Excellent History
- By Rilezmom on 06-06-09
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What listeners say about Sailing from Byzantium
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Amazon Customer
- 01-07-13
I just want to give a star rating. If you force me
If you could sum up Sailing from Byzantium in three words, what would they be?
I just want to give a star rating. If you force me to say more, I will give you this tripe.
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- Leonor Macias
- 12-26-19
informative
I learned a lot from this book. I am glad that I bought it. It answered many questions that I have hadi for a very long time.
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Overall
- Leigh A
- 01-07-09
Not a first read for the period.
I would recommend this book to those who are already students of the period. It is a difficult read. I made it through and did follow much but my hair line receded from all that flew over my head. As with most historians Wells attempts to show the pivotal influence of his topic in shaping the rest of history. Byzantine influence was no doubt a factor in the Arab, Slav, and European worlds, but the avalanche of detail obscures the point to the casual reader.
The narration is adequate.
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8 people found this helpful
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- Robert Simmons
- 04-20-21
did you ever wonder why the Renaissance happened?
We learn in school school that the Renaissance happened because people in Europe discovered the wonderful heritage and knowledge of the ancient world. what they don't teach is they learned it from Byzantium. The fall of Byzantium to the Turks in 1452 triggered the Renaissancein Italy by the refugees from Byzantium who brought he accumulated knowledge and legacy of the ancient world had been living in Byzantium all along. that knowledge was brought back to the West . similarly have you heard how wonderful Arabic science and mathematics was in medieval times, both in the Middle East and in Spain. again blame this on the byzantines. have you ever wondered why there are all these strange Christian freelance in the East who are not part of the Catholic Church where did they come from? the truth is every major city at the old Roman Empire had its own patriarch. the patriarch of Rome took his see out of the church because of the disagreement with the Roman emperor in Byzantium after Christianity was 1,000 years old. this is a wonderful book for westerners to read it sets the record straight that we owe a huge debt to Byzantium. Sailing for Byzantium is a great book.
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- Marianne
- 10-24-11
Compelling story; horrible narration!
Very well researched, this book fills in a lot of gaps, while tying together Byzantium's vast influences on early world powers. I have read and listened to several histories of the eras covered in this book, and found that this one pulls them into perspectives with each other very nicely. The most disappointing part is that the reading is truly awful! I have listened to many dozens of audio books and this narration rates high on the list of the worst. Possibly the reason some reviewers found the book dry is due to the narration, which is ponderous and halting at best, and screamingly annoying at worst. There are too many mispronunciations and sentences left hanging off a cliff. The reader does not even know how to read the possessive of a name ending in "s" - grammar school stuff. I feel cheated, in that the sample given on this site is the only cohesive reading the narrator gave in the entire performance. I would have enjoyed the book much more with a better reader.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 09-26-21
Great read but not for beginners
Excellent history book! You need to be familiar with Byzantine, early Slavic/Russian, Renaissance Italy and Islamic empire history to get the full effect!! For the beginners, have At least some handy guides or be prepared to Wikipedia. Book is awesome!!
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- Marje
- 01-01-10
For dedicated students of the age
A scholarly work that will be primarily of interest to dedicated students of the age, Sailing from Byzantium chronicles the profound influence that the 1000-year old Byzantine Empire had on 1) Europe and the Renaissance, 2) Slavic countries (Russia and the "Third Rome") and 3) the Islamic world. Of particular interest to me were the Byzantine humanists who played a critical role in the transmission of Hellenic thought and classical knowledge to the world. The eminent scholar, Chrysoloras, and other Byzantine humanists carried by hand many of the ancient Greek writings to from Constantinople to early Renaissance Italy and were profoundly influential on the flowering of new thought and the intense creativity of the time.
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- Nikoli Gogol
- 12-29-07
The Missing Years
Accounts of European History end with the sack of Rome in 410, then have a black hole called the Dark Ages, and then pick up the story with Charlemagne. This account of history is very incomplete and inaccurate.
While Western Europe was in decline, the Byzantine Empire was in existence from the year 330 to 1453 during which time it was the wellspring of science, art, literature, and history. This Empire was in existence longer that Britain’s government, if one dates it from the Battle of Hastings in the 1066. The works of the ancient Greeks and Romans were preserved, copied and transmitted. Byzantium and its enemies referred to it as the uninterrupted Roman Empire until its fall.
The author shows that three empires in turn benefitted from Byzantium’s contributions: Western Europe; the Slavic Countries most notably Russia (the self styled “Third Rome”); and Moslems. Significantly, Byzantine monks invented the Cyrillic alphabet for use by the Slavs and translated the bible into a vernacular in the 9th century. The British did not have a vernacular bible till the 17 century.
The term “Byzantine” has acquired the pejorative meaning similar to the term "Kafkaesque" because of complication in messy dynastic changes, the similarity of names of offspring, and theological disputes in which the Orthodox beliefs of the Byzantines were more in keeping with the Christian canon than Rome’s view on the same topics.
Edward Gibbon, a skeptic, weighed in with his acidic and exaggerated descriptions of the worst that Byzantium had to offer. This is hardly a reason to dismiss the innumerable positive achievements of Byzantium and its effect in enlightening Europe and making the Renaissance possible.
See also Justinian’s Flea and the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon, both available on Audible.
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- Navinfl
- 09-26-10
Good, and informative perspective of the era
This book was both informative and interesting. At times it gets a little dull and sometimes the amount of names require that you rewind more than necessary, but over all it gave me a different perspective than what I have previously read. It has three parts: Rome and how the Byzantine Empire continued as "Rome" long after the Roman Empire's demise and Europe sank into the dark ages. Constantinople and the rise of Islam, its conquests in Europe and the East, and the rise of the West. And lastly, how eastern Europe ultimately kept the Byzantine culture and religion alive.
It is a very good "global" view of the regions history and its affect on us today. The Byzantine Empire ultimately kept the Greek philosophies, art and culture alive for the west, and probably even Christianity, as well as its flavor of Christianity. Overall, it's probably closer to a 3.75 rating but I think it is a book worth reading (ok, to listen to).
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- Henry
- 02-11-08
Dull, Dry, and Learned
I am an avid listener of non-fiction. I had previously listened to Thomas Cahill's How the Irish Saved Civilization and had found it fascinating and of course informative. I have also recently finished The Rise and Fall of Alexandria by Justin Pollard and Howard Reid that similarly entertained and educated me. However, I have to admit that after two determined attempts of academically disciplined listening I have yet to finish this book. It is simply too dull. This book drones on and on, listlessly and lazily listing names of persons until one can hardly remember the point of it all. I don’t doubt for a moment the accuracy of the names, dates, places, and actions cited. I just wish it all could have come together with some compelling prose that could at least propel the read to the final period.
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16 people found this helpful