Yet it is also one of the most puzzling, with an intriguing and sometimes violent history, from the sixth century BCE to the present day. Destroyed by Vesuvius in 79 CE, the ruins of Pompeii offer the best evidence we have of life in the Roman Empire. But the eruptions are only part of the story. In The Fires of Vesuvius, acclaimed historian Mary Beard makes sense of the remains. She explores what kind of town it was--more like Calcutta or the Costa del Sol?--and what it can tell us about ordinary life there. From sex to politics, food to religion, slavery to literacy, Beard offers us the big picture even as she takes us close enough to the past to smell the bad breath and see the intestinal tapeworms of the inhabitants of the lost city. She resurrects the Temple of Isis as a testament to ancient multiculturalism. At the Suburban Baths we go from communal bathing to hygiene to erotica. Recently, Pompeii has been a focus of pleasure and loss: from Pink Floyd's memorable rock concert to Primo Levi's elegy on the victims. But Pompeii still does not give up its secrets quite as easily as it may seem. This book shows us how much more and less there is to Pompeii than a city frozen in time as it went about its business on 24 August 79.

    In Helms' exegesis of the Gospel miracle stories, he traces the greatest of these - the resurrection of Lazarus four days after his death - to the Egyptian myth of the resurrection of Osiris by the god Horus.Helms maintains that the Gospels are self-reflexive; they are not about Jesus so much as they are about the writers' attitudes concerning Jesus. Helms examines each of the narratives - the language, the sources, the similarities and differences - and shows that their purpose was not so much to describe the past as to affect the present.This scholarly yet readable work demonstrates how the Gospels surpassed the expectations of their authors, influencing countless generations by creating a life-enhancing understanding of the nature of Jesus of Nazareth.

    Completely updated and revised by preeminent historian J. M. Roberts, this volume features ninety up-to-date maps, new sections, and extremely well-written and accessible articles throughout. Truly global and comprehensive, it succeeds in conveying the staggering diversity of the human experience across a vast range of climates and conditions. This is the one book for anyone interested in the variety and grandeur of history’s march.

    Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.

    However, not every pontiff has acted in an entirely admirable and saintly manner. A Dark History: The Popes reveals the darkest deeds of the papacy: the murky and immoral past of the throne of St. Peter.The darkness of the papal history revealed here goes a great deal further than bribery, nepotism, and other vices. There were also atrocities perpetrated by the Church under papal orders, such as the medieval crusade against the dissident Cathars, which ultimately amounted to genocide. Popes committed—or at least sanctioned— murder. Popes were themselves murdered. By the order of Pope Urban VIII (1623–1644), the astronomer Galileo Galilei was persecuted by the Inquisition and kept under house arrest for ten years. Pope Pius XII (1939–1958) remains controversial today for his actions—or lack of them—during World War II.This book reveals a catalog of wrongdoings perpetrated by popes over the centuries, a record that has been mainly kept from the public eye. Fortunately, the dirty doings of the popes have not been confined to papal records. Diaries, letters, reports from foreign ambassadors to the Vatican, and official registers of the ecclesiastical courts have revealed a broader picture which shows how popes could be sinners as well as saints, and between them indulged in virtually every sin and every vice it was possible to commit.

    But in this classic work, Christian philosopher and statesman Elton Trueblood reveals how Lincoln's leadership skills flowed directly from his religious convictions—which explains how the president was able to combine what few leaders can hold together: moral resoluteness with a shrewd ability to compromise; confidence in his cause while refusing to succumb to the traps of self-righteousness or triumphalism; and a commitment to victory while never losing sight of his responsibility for—or the humanity of—his enemy. These rich meditations offer deep wisdom and insight on one of the most effective leaders of all time.

    S. Lewis continues to inspire and fascinate millions. His legacy remains varied and vast. He was a towering intellectual figure, a popular fiction author who inspired a global movie franchise around the world of Narnia, and an atheist-turned-Christian thinker.In C.S. Lewis: A Life, Alister McGrath, prolific author and respected professor at King's College of London, paints a definitive portrait of the life of C. S. Lewis. After thoroughly examining recently published Lewis correspondence, Alister challenges some of the previously held beliefs about the exact timing of Lewis's shift from atheism to theism and then to Christianity. He paints a portrait of an eccentric thinker who became an inspiring, though reluctant, prophet for our times.You won't want to miss this fascinating portrait of a creative genius who inspired generations. (Tyndale House Publishers)

    The repercussions of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand - Emperor Franz Josef's nephew and heir apparent - by a Bosnian Serb are with us to this day. The immediate aftermath of that act was war. Global in extent, it would last almost five years and leave five million civilian casualties and more than nine million military dead. On both the Allied and Central Powers sides, losses - missing, wounded, dead - were enormous. After the war, barely a town or village in Europe was without its monument to the dead. The war also left us with new technologies of death: tanks, planes, and submarines; reliable rapid-fire machine guns and artillery; motorized cavalry. It ushered in new tactics of warfare: shipping convoys and U-boat packs, dog fights and reconnaissance air support. And it bequeathed to us terrors we still cannot control: poison gas and chemical warfare, strategic bombing of civilian targets, massacres and atrocities against entire population groups. But most of all, it changed our world. In its wake, empires toppled, monarchies fell, whole political systems realigned. Instabilities became institutionalized, enmities enshrined. Revolution swept to power ideologies of the left and right. And the social order shifted seismically. Manners, mores, codes of behavior; literature and the arts; education and class distinctions: all underwent a vast sea change. In all these ways, the twentieth century could be said to have been born on the morning of June 28, 1914. Now, in a companion volume to his acclaimed The Second World War, Martin Gilbert weaves together all of these elements to create a stunning, dramatic, and informative narrative. The First World War is everything we have come to expect from the scholar the Times Literary Supplement placed "in the first rank of contemporary historians."

    Ann Spangler and Lois Tverberg paint powerful scenes from Jesus’ ministry, immersing you in the prayers, feasts, history, culture, and customs that shaped Jesus and those who followed him.You will hear the parables as they must have sounded to first-century Jews, powerful and surprising. You will join the conversations that were already going on among the rabbis of his day. You will watch with new understanding as the events of his life unfold. And you will emerge with new excitement about the roots of your own Christian faith. Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus will change the way you read Scripture and deepen your understanding of the life of Jesus. It will also help you to adapt the rich prayers and customs you learn about to your own life, in ways that both respect and enrich your Christian faith. By looking at the Jewishness of Jesus, Ann Spangler and Lois Tverberg take you on a captivating journey into the heart of Judaism, one that is both balanced and insightful, helping you to better understand and appreciate your own faith.

    He shows first how the Huns overtuned the existing strategic balance of power on Rome's European frontiers to force the Goths and others to seek refuge inside the empire. This prompted two generations of struggle, during which new barbarian coalitions, formed in response to Roman hostility, brought the Roman west to its knees. The Goths first destroyed a Roman army at the battle of Hadrianople in 378 and went on to sack Rome in 410. The Vandals spread devastation in Gaul and Spain befor conquering North Africa, the breadbasket of the western empire, in 439. We then meet Attila the Hun, whose reign of terror swept from Constantinople to Paris, but whose death in 453 ironically precipitated a final desperate phase of Roman collapse, culminating in the Vandals' defeat of the massive Byzantine Armada, the west's last change for survival.Peter Heather convincingly argues that the Roman Empire was not on the brink of social or moral collapse. What brought it to an end were the barbarians.

    The intellectual and spiritual worlds of women are also explored.Based on an abundance of research from the last twenty-five years, Medieval Women describes the diversity and vitality of English women's lives in the Middle Ages.

    The Cathars, whose religion was based on the Gospels but contradicted the tenets set forth by Rome, found themselves the focus of ruthless repression. In systematic waves of brutal persecution, thousands of Cathars were captured, summarily tried, and burned at the stake as heretics. Yet so ardent was their faith that during the years 1290 to 1329, the Cathars rose up one last time. René Weis tells the dramatic and moving story of these thirty years, offering a rich medieval tale of faith, adventure, sex, and courage. Having spent years exploring a rich trove of untouched information, including trial records and interrogation transcripts, Weis creates a remarkably detailed portrait of the last great gasp of the movement and the day-to-day life of the individual Cathars in their villages. This is an exceptionally vivid re-creation of a fascinating, and otherwise lost, world.

    Will our world ever become a ruin for future archaeologists to dig up and explore? The questions themselves are both philosophical and like something out of The Twilight Zone.Combining his trademark mix of storytelling, history and weirdness Dan Carlin connects the past and future in fascinating and colorful ways. At the same time the questions he asks us to consider involve the most important issue imaginable: human survival. From the collapse of the Bronze Age to the challenges of the nuclear era the issue has hung over humanity like a persistent Sword of Damocles.Inspired by his podcast, The End is Always Near challenges the way we look at the past and ourselves. In this absorbing compendium, Carlin embarks on a whole new set of stories and major cliffhangers that will keep readers enthralled. Idiosyncratic and erudite, offbeat yet profound, The End is Always Near examines issues that are rarely presented, and makes the past immediately relevant to our very turbulent present.

    David Abulafia's The Great Sea is the first complete history of the Mediterranean, from the erection of temples on Malta around 3500 BC to modern tourism. Ranging across time and the whole extraordinary space of the Mediterranean from Gibraltar to Jaffa, Genoa to Tunis, and bringing to life pilgrims, pirates, sultans and naval commanders, this is the story of the sea that has shaped much of world history.

    . . intellectual and religious history of late medieval and Reformation Europe.”—Christianity Today"A learned, humane, and expressive book."—Gerald Strauss, Renaissance Quarterly The seeds of the swift and sweeping religious movement that reshaped European thought in the 1500s were sown in the late Middle Ages. In this book, Steven Ozment traces the growth and dissemination of dissenting intellectual trends through three centuries to their explosive burgeoning in the Reformations—both Protestant and Catholic—of the sixteenth century. He elucidates with great clarity the complex philosophical and theological issues that inspired antagonistic schools, traditions, and movements from Aquinas to Calvin. This masterly synthesis of the intellectual and religious history of the period illuminates the impact of late medieval ideas on early modern society.