New series from DK designed to help kids learn how to read and learn to love readingSpace Quest is a 'Starting To Read Alone' reader, perfect for children beginning to read alone as they develop skills to read confidently, accurately, fluently and with good understanding. DK Reads proves that good reads build great readers.Embark with five astronauts on a mission to explore the planets of the solar system. First stop - Mars. Explore the canyon Valles Marin...

DK Reads Space Quest: Jump to Jupiter is part of DK's three-level reading scheme helping kids learn how to read at home - and learn to love readingSpace Quest: Jump to Jupiter is for kids "Starting to Read Alone", developing skills to read confidently, fluently and with good understanding.After successfully completing their mission to Mars, five brave astronauts (and their pet rabbit) begin their rocky ride to Jupiter. Join the ride through the asteroid be...

A compilation of facts, figures, maps, family trees, summaries of the major crusades and their historiography, the Routledge Companion to the Crusades spans a broad chronological range from the eleventh to the eighteenth century, and gives a chronological framework and context for modern research on the crusading movement.Not just a history of the Crusades, but an overview of the logistical, economic, social and biographical history, this is a core text for studen...

Despite the enormous literature on the crusades, the Frankish states in the Aegean (set up in the wake of the Fourth Crusade in 1204) have been seriously neglected by modern historians. Yet their history is both compelling in itself - these were the last crusader states to be set up in the eastern Mediterranean and among the last to fall to the Turks - and also valuable for the case study they offer in medieval colonialism. Peter Lock surveys the social, economic, religious and cultural as...

This is the first full translation of Marino Sanudo Torsello's Secreta fidelium Crucis to be made into English. The work itself is a piece of crusading propaganda following the fall of Acre in 1291, written between 1300 and 1321, but it includes much of historical relevance along with interesting observations on the early history of Jerusalem and the Crusader Kingdom. The translation is based upon the text edited by Jacques Bongars in 1611. There is an introduction that contextualises the ...

In 1202, zealous Western Christians gathered in Venice determined to liberate Jerusalem from the grip of Islam. But the crusaders never made it to the Holy Land. Steered forward by the shrewd Venetian doge, they descended instead on Constantinople, wreaking terrible devastation. The crusaders spared no one: They raped and massacred thousands, plundered churches, and torched the lavish city. By 1204, one of the great civilizations of history had been shattered. Here, on the eight hundredth ...

In April 1204, the armies of Western Christendom wrote another bloodstained chapter in the history of holy war. Two years earlier, aflame with religious zeal, the Fourth Crusade set out to free Jerusalem from the grip of Islam. But after a dramatic series of events, the crusaders turned their weapons against the Christian city of Constantinople, the heart of the Byzantine Empire and the greatest metropolis in the known world.The crusaders spared no one in their savagery: they murde...

The five hundred years that separate the mid-tenth century from the mid-15th century constitute a critical and formative period in the history of Europe.This was the age of the system of legal and military obligation known as 'feudalism', and of the birth and consolidation of powerful kingdoms in England, France and Spain; it was an era of urbanization and the expansion of trade, of the building of the great Romanesque and Gothic cathedrals, of courtly romance and the art of the tr...

R.C. Davis provided the classic account of the European medieval world; equipping generations of undergraduate and ‘A’ level students with sufficient grasp of the period to debate diverse historical perspectives and reputations. His book has been important grounding for both modernists required to take a course in medieval history, and those who seek to specialise in the medieval period.In updating this classic work to a third edition, the additional author now enables students...

Drawing from a variety of sources - literary, visual, archaeological; papyri, inscriptions and coins – the author studies the nature of Diocletian’s imperial strategy, his wars, his religious views and his abdication. The author also examines Galerius’ endeavour to take control of Diocletian’s empire, his failures and successes, against the backdrop of Constantine’s remorseless drive to power.The first comprehensive study of the Emperor Galerius, this book offers an innovative anal...

Dan Jones narrates in his inimitably vivid and authoritative fashion the remarkable story of the Knights Templar.'Exhilarating, epic, sword-swinging history' TLS'Jones is certainly an entertainer, but also a fine historian who knows how to render serious scholarship into accessible prose' The Times'Another triumphant tale from a historian who writes as addictively as any page-turning novelist' O...

A spirited history of the changes that transformed Europe during the 1,000-year span of the Middle Ages: "A dazzling race through a complex millennium."— Publishers WeeklyThe millennium between the breakup of the western Roman Empire and the Reformation was a long and hugely transformative period—one not easily chronicled within the scope of a few hundred pages. Yet distinguished historian Chris Wickham has taken up the challenge in this l...