Of all the civilisations existing in the year 1000, that ofWestern Europe seemed the unlikeliest candidate for futuregreatness. Com pared to the glittering empires of Byzantium orIslam, the splintered kingdoms on the edge of the Atlantic appearedimpoverished, fearful and backward. But the anarchy of these yearsproved to be, not the portents of the end of the world, as manyChristians had dreaded, but rather the birthpangs of a radicallynew order. MILLENNIUM is a stunning panoramic account of the twocenturies on either side of the apocalyptic year 1000. This was theage of Canute, William the Conqueror and Pope Gregory VII, ofVikings, monks and serfs, of the earliest castles and the inventionof knighthood, and of the primal conflict between church and state.The story of how the distinctive culture of Europe - restless,creative and dynamic - was forged from out of the convulsions ofthese extraordinary times is as fascinating and as momentous as anyin history.
Essential passages from the works of four "fathers ofhistory"-Herodotus's History, Thucydides' History of thePeloponnesian War, Xenophon's Anabasis, and Polybius's Histories.--This text refers to the Kindle Edition.
A lively, compulsively browsable collection of neglectednotables-from the bestselling author of A Treasury of RoyalScandals "History," wrote Thomas Carlyle, "is the essence of innumerablebiographies." Yet countless fascinating characters are relegated toa historical limbo. In A Treasury of Foolishly ForgottenAmericans , Michael Farquhar has scoured the annals and rescuedthirty of the most intriguing, unusual, and yes, memorableAmericans from obscurity. From the mother of Mother's Day to PaulRevere's rival rider, the Mayflower murderer to "America'sSherlock Holmes," these figures are more than historicalrunners-up-they're the spies, explorers, patriots, and martyrswithout whom history as we know it would be very differentindeed.
The Ottoman Empire was one of the largest and most influentialempires in world history. Its reach extended to three continentsand it survived for more than six centuries, but its history is toooften colored by the memory of its bloody final throes on thebattlefields of World War I. In this magisterial work--the firstdefinitive account written for the general reader--renowned scholarand journalist Caroline Finkel lucidly recounts the epic story ofthe Ottoman Empire from its origins in the thirteenth centurythrough its destruction in the twentieth.
