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Filling a gap in the literature for an academically oriented volume on the Viking period, this unique book is a one-stop authoritative introduction to all the latest research in the field.
Bringing together today's leading scholars, both established seniors and younger, cutting-edge academics, Stefan Brink and Neil Price have constructed the first single work to gather innovative research from a spectrum of disciplines (including archaeology, history, philology, comparative religion, numismatics, and cultural geography) to create the most comprehensive Viking Age book of its kind ever attempted.
Consisting of longer articles providing overviews of important themes, supported by shorter papers focusing on material of particular interest, this comprehensive volume covers such wide-ranging topics as social institutions, spatial issues, the Viking Age economy, warfare, beliefs, language, voyages, and links with medieval and Christian Europe.
This original work, specifically oriented towards a university audience and the educated public, will have a self-evident place as an undergraduate course book and will be a standard work of reference for all those in the field.
It was a time of revolution. The Roman Revolution describes the little known 'crisis of the third century', and how it led to a revolutionary new Roman Empire. Long before the more famous collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century, in the years between AD 235-275, barbarian invasions, civil war, and plague devastated ancient Rome. Out of this ordeal came new leaders, new government, new armies, and a new vision of what it was to be Roman. Best remembered today is the rapid rise of Christianity in this period, as Rome's pagan gods were rejected, and the emperor Constantine converted to this new religion. Less well remembered is the plethora of other changes that conspired to provide an environment well suited to a religious revolution.
Drawing on the latest research, Nick Holmes looks for new answers to old questions. He charts the rise of the Roman Republic and the classical Roman Empire, examining the roles played by sheer good luck and the benign climate. Focusing on the reigns of the critically important but under-researched emperors in the third century, such as Aurelian, Diocletian, and Constantine, he vividly brings to life how Rome just escaped catastrophe in the third century, and embarked on a journey that would take it into a brave new world-one which provided the foundations for modern Europe and America.
A skilled storyteller, Holmes presents a riveting account of the wars, intrigues and personalities that contributed to Rome's decline, with entire chapters devoted to single battles.' Kirkus Reviews
Why did Rome Fall?
In this gripping retelling of one of the most momentous chapters in history, Nick Holmes presents a new interpretation of an old story. The fate of Rome was decided not just by emperors, soldiers, and barbarians but also by an environmental disaster.
A catastrophic megadrought on the Asian steppes in the fourth century AD forced the migration of entire peoples-Huns, Goths, Vandals, and others-west into the Roman Empire. They met an empire weakened from war with Persia. Rome's misfortunes multiplied as it made tactical errors on the battlefield. Civil war, religious unrest, and political incompetence compounded a worsening situation. The result was one of the greatest disasters in the ancient world-the sack of Rome by the Goths in AD 410.
Since its founding in 1995, the FSB, Russia's Federal Security Service, has regained the majority of the domestic security functions of the Soviet-era KGB. Under Vladimir Putin, who served as FSB director just before becoming president, the agency has grown to be one of the most powerful and favored organizations in Russia. The FSB not only conducts internal security but also has primacy in intelligence operations in former Soviet states. Their activities include anti-dissident operations at home and abroad, counterintelligence, counterterrorism, criminal investigations of crimes against the state, and guarding Russia's borders.
In The Russian FSB, Kevin P. Riehle provides a brief history of the FSB's origins, placed within the context of Russian history, the government's power structure, and Russia's wider culture. He describes how the FSB's mindset and priorities show continuities from the tsarist regimes and the Soviet era. The book's chapters analyze origins, organizational structure, missions, leaders, international partners, and cultural representations such as the FSB in film and television.
Based on both English and Russian sources, this book is a well-researched introduction to understanding the FSB and its central role in Putin's Russia.
The first book to examine the iconic depiction of evolution, the 'march of progress,' and its role in shaping our understanding of how humans evolved
We are all familiar with the 'march of progress,' the representation of evolution that depicts a series of apelike creatures becoming progressively taller and more erect before finally reaching the upright human form. Its emphasis on linear progress has had a decisive impact on public understanding of evolution, yet the image contradicts modern scientific conceptions of evolution as complex and branching.
This book is the first to examine the origins and history of this ubiquitous and hugely consequential illustration. In a story spanning more than a century, from Victorian Britain to America in the Space Age, Gowan Dawson traces the interconnected histories of the two most important versions of the image: the frontispiece to Thomas Henry Huxley's Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature (1863) and 'The Road to Homo Sapiens,' a fold-out illustration in the bestselling book Early Man (1965). Dawson explores how the recurring appearances of this image pointed to shifting scientific and public perspectives on human evolution, as well as indicated novel artistic approaches, and advancements in technology.
As the world recently commemorated the hundredth anniversary of the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun, our fascination with the pharaoh begs for a balanced view. Most recovered mummies have not escaped the modern trafficking in ancient bodies and body parts. The story of Ankh-Hap, a Ptolemaic-era mummy seized in the nineteenth century from the infamous mummy-pits of Egypt, provides a salutary example of what most mummies have endured.
Frank Holt makes use of a robust combination of scientific tools and archival research to tell the story of Ankh-Hap's life, death, and his mummified remains, which ended up in the back of an American college classroom. A Mystery from the Mummy-Pits takes the listener into a forgotten world of mummy trafficking by an American entrepreneur named Henry Augustus Ward. His company's shelves were stocked with mummies, coffins, and even ancient body parts. Customers could piece together their own 'Frankenmummy' with authentic wrappings and amulets.
A Mystery from the Mummy-Pits contextualizes this information by surveying the history of similar mummies from antiquity to the twentieth century, moving from ancient tomb robbers and medieval apothecaries to modern dime museums, traveling shows, pulp fiction, films, and pop culture. The book offers listeners a glimpse inside a dark chapter of mummy history.
Codenamed Operation Telic, the British component of the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was the largest gathering of British troops since the Second World War.
While the British public prepared for the worst as its soldiers were facing weapons of mass destruction, most servicemen and women were under no illusion that they were invading Iraq to rid the people of Saddam Hussein.
While much has been said about WMD and Tony Blair's government, not nearly enough has been heard from those men and women that took part in Operation Telic.
From controlling the vast Allied Air Forces in an AWACS plane down to submariners beneath the Persian Gulf firing Tomahawk Cruise missiles, from the steaming hot turret of a Challenger Tank as it is peppered with RPGs, to being on your belly in a sandstorm disarming unexploded bombs-these veteran accounts cover the whole spectrum of experiences.
Polarized public opinion and the post-war media portrayal of the war has detracted from what was achieved by these forces, when tasked to do so, often with insufficient or inadequate resources. These are their stories of courage, fortitude, pride, and brotherhood amidst the harsh realities of modern asymmetric warfare.
At the height of its power, the Roman Empire encompassed the entire Mediterranean basin. Rome prospered for centuries while successfully resisting attack, fending off everything from overnight robbery raids to full-scale invasion attempts by entire nations on the move. How were troops able to defend the Empire's vast territories from constant attacks? And how did they do so at such moderate cost that their treasury could pay for an immensity of highways, aqueducts, amphitheaters, city baths, and magnificent temples?
In The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire, seasoned defense analyst Edward N. Luttwak reveals how the Romans were able to combine military strength, diplomacy, and fortifications to effectively respond to changing threats. Rome's secret was not ceaseless fighting, but comprehensive strategies that unified force, diplomacy, and an immense infrastructure of roads, forts, walls, and barriers. Finally, as barbarians began to penetrate the empire, Rome filed large armies in a strategy of 'defense-in-depth,' allowing invaders to pierce Rome's borders.
This updated edition has been extensively revised to incorporate recent scholarship and archeological findings. This illuminating book remains essential to both ancient historians and students of modern strategy.
In the second half of the tenth century, Byzantium embarked on a series of spectacular conquests. By the early eleventh century, the empire was the most powerful state in the Mediterranean. Yet this imperial project came to a crashing collapse fifty years later, when political disunity, fiscal mismanagement, and defeat at the hands of the Seljuks and the Normans brought an end to Byzantine hegemony. By 1081, Byzantium's very existence was threatened.
How did this transformation happen? Based on a close examination of the relevant sources, this history offers a new reconstruction of the key events and crucial reigns as well as a different model for understanding imperial politics and wars. In addition to providing a narrative of this critical period of Byzantine history, Streams of Gold, Rivers of Blood offers new interpretations of topics relevant to the medieval era. The narrative unfolds in three parts: the first covers the years 955-1025, a period of imperial conquest and consolidation of authority under the great emperor Basil 'the Bulgar-Slayer.' The second (1025-1059) examines the dispersal of centralized authority in Constantinople and the emergence of new foreign enemies. The last section chronicles the collapse of the empire, concluding with a look at the First Crusade and its consequences for Byzantine relations with the powers of Western Europe.
This book tells the stories of the Muslims, Christians, Jews and others who made a courageous stand against the mass slaughter of Ottoman Armenians in 1915, the first modern genocide. Foreigners and Ottomans alike ran considerable risks to bear witness and rescue victims, sometimes sacrificing their lives.
Diplomats, humanitarians, missionaries, lawyers and other visitors to the Empire stood up, including Tolstoy's daughter, Alexandra; Raphael Lemkin, the jurist who first established genocide as an international crime; and the polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen, who recognized and relieved the plight of stateless Armenian refugees. Ottoman subjects-from officials and officers to ordinary townspeople and villagers-faced near-certain death for their entire family by resisting orders and helping Armenians.
Unlike the Righteous of the Holocaust, these heroes have been systematically ignored and erased-a major injustice. Based on fresh research and hoping to repay a moral debt to Ottoman Muslims who braved everything to rescue the authors' forebears, this book is an important, moving testament to a grievously overlooked aspect of the Armenian tragedy.
The only way to truly understand what it was like to fight in the Second World War is to listen to the experiences of those men who were there. And often, there was nowhere more dangerous than on the ground.
In Footsloggers, Peter Hart reconstructs one infantry battalion's war in staggering detail. Based on his interviews with members of the 16th Durham Light Infantry, Hart bears witness not only to their comradeship, suffering, dreadful losses, and individual tragedies, but also their courage and self-sacrifice as they fought their way across North Africa, Italy, and Greece. This is a human look at the inhuman nature of war from the author of At Close Range and Burning Steel.
Contains mature themes.
At the end of the fifteenth century, Burgundy was extinguished as an independent state. It had been a fabulously wealthy, turbulent region situated between France and Germany, with close links to the English kingdom. Torn apart by the dynastic struggles of early modern Europe, this extraordinary realm vanished from the map. But it became the cradle of what we now know as the Low Countries, modern Belgium and the Netherlands.
This is the story of a thousand years, a must-listen narrative history of ambitious aristocrats, family dysfunction, treachery, savage battles, luxury, and madness. It is about the decline of knightly ideals and the awakening of individualism and of cities, the struggle for dominance in the heart of northern Europe, bloody military campaigns, and fatally bad marriages. It is also a remarkable cultural history, of great art and architecture and music emerging despite the violence and the chaos of the tension between rival dynasties.
