Denis is a ne'er-do-well that has lived a carefree life of adventure and lust until a fateful day that will change his life and his soul forever.Stephan and Bassina are the innocent children of a Frankish noble until an enemy raiding party destroys their family and their childhoods.Ibriham is the pampered son of the great Caliph who seeks to spread his beloved religion in a distant land, but is disillusioned by the dark side of humanity until he finds love in an unexpected ...

An uproarious, eye-opening history of Europe's notorious royal houses that leaves no throne unturned and will make you glad you live in a democracy.Do you want to know which queen has the unique distinction of being the only known royal kleptomaniac? Or which empress kept her dirty underwear under lock and key? Or which czar, upon discovering his wife's infidelity, had her lover decapitated and the head, pickled in a jar, placed at her bedside?Royally dishing on hundreds of...

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: Rome generated its own nemesis. Centuries of imperialism turned the neighbors it called barbarians into an enemy capable of dismantling the Empire that had dominated their lives for so long. Heather is a leading authority on the late Roman Empire and on the barbarians. In The Fall of the Roman Empire, he explores the extraordina...

“Reads like a novel. A fast-paced page-turner, it has everything: sex, wit, humor, and adventures. But it is an impressively researched and important story.”—David Fromkin, author of Europe’s Last SummerVienna, 1814 is an evocative and brilliantly researched account of the most audacious and extravagant peace conference in modern European history. With the feared Napoleon Bonaparte presumably defeated and exiled to the small island of Elba, heads of some 21...

"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power"-Abraham LincolnThroughout history, all monarchs have lived with the strange dichotomy of simultaneously being human and more than human. In our time, when monarchies seem little more than tourist curiosities and democracy is taken for granted, it is easy to forget just how much power pre-democratic rulers once wielded.The rulers a...

The Western Front, running from the Belgian coast in the north to the Swiss border in the south, was to prove the decisive battlefront of World War I. It was where the great powers of Germany, France and the British Empire concentrated the bulk of their military might, and it was where many believed the war would be settled before Christmas 1914.The German General Staff realised the dangers of fighting a two-front war against both France and Russia simultaneously. They sought to kno...

The illustrated history of Hitler's land forces – from the Panzer crewman on the Eastern Front to the infantryman in Normandy and the last ditch defence units of Waffen-SS and Hitler Youth.Hitler's Armies is the definitive work on Hitler's war machine charting its evolution from the formidable force which won stunning victories during the Blitzkrieg in 1940, to the hard campaigns it fought in the deserts of North Africa and the frozen wastelands of the Sov...

In 1373, John of Gaunt set off from Calais on a great raid to strike at the heart of France. Driven by the high ideals of chivalry,the raiders left with epic pageantry. However, the reality soon overwhelmed the raiders. Beset on all sides by French ambushes and plagued by disease and starvation, the raiders battled their way through Champagne, east of Paris, into Burgundy, across the Massif Central and finally down into the Dordogne. Unable to attack any major fortifications, John of Gaunt...

"Remind[s] us that all humankind has a shared past and, particularly with regard to its choice of weapons and warfare, a shared stake in the future." —Stuart Rochester, The Washington Post Book WorldIn this magnificent synthesis of military, technological, and social history, William H. McNeill explores a whole millennium of human upheaval and traces the path by which we have arrived at the frightening dilemmas that now confront us. McNei...

At its height the Roman Empire stretched across Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, maintained by an army of modest size but great diversity.In popular culture these soldiers are often portrayed in a generic fashion, but continuing research indicates significant variations in Roman armour and equipment not only between different legions and the provincially-raised auxiliary cohorts that made up half of the army, but also between different regions within the e...

Since the publication of the first edition of The Crusades: A Reader, interest in the Crusades has increased dramatically, fueled in part by current global interactions between the Muslim world and Western nations. The second edition features an intriguing new chapter on perceptions of the Crusades in the modern period, from David Hume and William Wordsworth to World War I political cartoons and crusading rhetoric circulating after 9/11. Islamic accounts of the treatment of prison...