E. Lendon surveys a millennium of warfare to discover how militaries change—and don’t change—and how an army’s greatness depends on its use of the past. Noting this was an age that witnessed few technological advances, J. E. Lendon shows us that the most successful armies were those that made the most effective use of cultural tradition. Ancient combat moved forward by looking backward for inspiration—the Greeks, to Homer; the Romans, to the Greeks and to their own heroic past. The best ancient armies recruited soldiers from societies with strong competitive traditions; and the best ancient leaders, from Alexander to Julius Caesar, called upon those traditions to encourage ferocious competition at every rank.Ranging from the Battle of Champions between Sparta and Argos in 550 B.C. through Julian’s invasion of Persia in A.D. 363, Soldiers and Ghosts brings to life the most decisive military contests of ancient Greece and Rome. Lendon places these battles, and the methods by which they were fought, in a sweeping narrative of ancient military history. On every battlefield, living soldiers fought alongside the ghosts of tradition—ghosts that would inspire greatness for almost a millennium before ultimately coming to stifle it.

    Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar—each was a master of war. Each had to look beyond the battlefield to decide whom to fight, when, and why; to know what victory was and when to end the war; to determine how to bring stability to the lands he conquered. Each general had to be a battlefield tactician and more: a statesman, a strategist, a leader.Tactics change, weapons change, but war itself remains much the same throughout the centuries, and a great warrior must know how to define success. Understanding where each of these three great (but flawed) commanders succeeded and failed can serve anyone who wants to think strategically or has to demonstrate leadership. In Masters of Command, Barry Strauss explains the qualities these great generals shared, the keys to their success, from ambition and judgment to leadership itself.The result of years of research, Masters of Command is based on surviving written documents and archeological evidence as well as the author’s travels in Italy, France, Greece, Turkey, and Tunisia in the footsteps of Alexander, Hannibal, and Caesar.

    M. Ironside's saga of the Thutmosides of ancient Egypt. This set contains: The Sekhmet Bed: Book 1 Thirteen-year-old Ahmose is given as Great Royal Wife to the new king, to legitimize his rule. But her elder sister Mutnofret has been raised to expect the privileged station. As Ahmose fights the currents of Egypt's politics and Mutnofret's vengeful anger, her youth and inexperience carry her beyond her depth and into the realm of sacrilege. To right her wrongs and save Egypt from the gods' wrath, Ahmose must face her most visceral fear: bearing an heir. But the gods of Egypt are exacting, and even her sacrifice may not be enough to restore the Two Lands to safety. The Crook and Flail: Book 2 Hatshepsut longs for power, but a woman on the throne defies the sacred order. As God's Wife of Amun, she believes she has found the perfect balance of peace and order. But when the powerful men of Egypt plot to replace her, she must decide whether to surrender her birthright to a man, or take for herself the throne of the Pharaoh. Sovereign of Stars: Book 3 Never in Egypt's long history has a woman reigned as king. As Hatshepsut wrestles with foreign enemies and domestic politics, her heart grows ever more troubled, for her daughter Neferure is haunted by a brutal and demanding god. Hatshepsut's fight to retain her hold on power, peace, and Neferure will carry her on an incomparable journey to the legendary kingdom of Punt. There, in the god's own valley, she must confront the bleakness of fate and the terrible frailty of eternity. The Bull of Min: Book 4 Conspiracy and treason simmer in the Two Lands. When an unexpected challenger to the succession arises, the royal family must face impossible choices. To protect what she most loves, the young queen Meryet will match wits against a demon from the past. Hatshepsut stands on the brink of the ultimate sacrifice. And Thutmose, torn between throne and family, must commit an unthinkable act against Hatshepsut...or allow Egypt to fall into the hands of an unpredictable killer.

    So did Shakespeare, Karl Marx, Grace Kelly, and President Truman, who would cross swords with his daughter, Margaret, when she came home from school. Lincoln was a canny dueler. Ignatius Loyola challenged a man to a duel for denying Christ’s divinity (and won). Less successful, but no less enthusiastic, was Mussolini, who would tell his wife he was “off to get spaghetti,” their code to avoid alarming the children. By the Sword is an epic history of sword fighting—a science, an art, and, for many, a religion that began at the dawn of civilization in ancient Egypt and has been an obsession for mankind ever since. With wit and insight, Richard Cohen gives us an engrossing history of the world via the sword.   With a new Preface by the author

    Michael Kulikowski s history begins with the reign of Hadrian, who visited the farthest reaches of his domain and created stable frontiers, to the decades after Constantine the Great, who overhauled the government, introduced a new state religion, and founded a second Rome.Factionalism and intrigue sapped the empire from within, even at its apex. Roman politics could resemble a blood sport: rivals resorted to assassination; emperors rose and fell with bewildering speed, their reigns measured in weeks, not years; and imperial succession was never entirely assured. Canny emperors including Marcus Aurelius, Septimius Severus, and Diocletian constantly cultivated the aristocracy s favor to maintain a grip on power. Despite such volatility, the Roman Empire protected its borders, defeating successive attacks from Goths and Germans, Persians and Parthians. Yet external threats persisted and the imperial government sagged under its own administrative weight. Religion, too, was in flux with the rise of Christianity and other forms of monotheism. In the fourth century CE, Constantine and his heirs reformed imperial institutions by separating civilian and military hierarchies, restructuring the government of both provinces and cities, and ensuring the prominence of Christianity.The Triumph of Empire is a fresh, authoritative narrative of Rome at its height and of its evolution from being the central power of the Mediterranean world to becoming one of several great Eurasian civilizations."

     He explains why Egypt was able to develop so rapidly and form such a sophisticated socio-political system. As a pioneer Egyptologist, Breasted draws upon a wide variety of sources to create this history of Ancient Egypt, from archaeology to ancient historians and translated hieroglyphics. Through the course of the book he uncovers early Egyptian religious beliefs, the development of the pyramids, the different dynasties that ruled, as well as many other fascinating subjects. A History of Egypt from the Earliest Times to the Persian Conquest is the authoritative history of Egypt and is essential reading for anyone interesting in learning more about this famous civilization. “Those who wish to obtain a general view of the history of Egypt, from the beginnings to the Persian invasion, written by a scholar steeped in knowledge of the texts, may turn to Professor Breasted’s History of Egypt, the fullest as well as most vivid and interesting that has ever been written.” The English Historical Review “The foremost communicator of Egyptology to general audiences.” History Today James Henry Breasted was an American archaeologist, Egyptologist and historian. A History of Egypt from the Earliest Times to the Persian Conquest was his first book, published in 1905. That year he was also promoted to become a professor in Egyptology and Oriental History. In 1919 he founded the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago. He died in 1935.

    Roger Crowley's readable and comprehensive account of the battle between Mehmed II, sultan of the Ottoman Empire, and Constantine XI, the 57th emperor of Byzantium, illuminates the period in history that was a precursor to the current jihad between the West and the Middle East.

    Today, even the name itself has become a battleground for conflicting Israeli and Palestinian visions of the country's past. Israelis treat the very notion of 'Palestine' as a modern invention, while rooting their own nation's history in the ancient Kingdom of Israel. But, as Nur Masalha shows, the concept of Palestine (derived from the biblical 'Philistine') is one which can be traced to the beginning of recorded history, grounded in a distinctive Palestinian culture that long predates the Old Testament narrative of Israelite conquest. Beginning with the earliest references to the area in ancient texts, Masalha explores how the concept of Palestine and its associated identity has evolved over thousands of years, from the Bronze Age to the present day. Drawing on a rich body of sources and the latest archaeological evidence, Masalha shows how Palestine's past has been distorted and mythologised by Biblical lore and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In the process, this magisterial work uncovers the true depth and complexity of Palestine's millennia-old heritage, and represents the authoritative account of the country's history.

    But is this image really accurate?Recent scholarship examining the Persian Empire from the Persian perspective has discovered a major force that has had a lasting influence on the world in terms of administration, economics, religion, architecture, and more. In fact, the Persian Empire was arguably the world's first global power—a diverse, multicultural empire with flourishing businesses and people on the move. It was an empire of information, made possible by a highly advanced infrastructure that included roads, canals, bridges, and a courier system. And the kings of Persia's Achaemenid dynasty —Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes, and others—presided over an empire that created a tremendous legacy for subsequent history.The Persian Empire is your opportunity to see one of the greatest empires in the ancient world from a fresh new perspective: its own. Over the span of 24 fascinating lectures, Professor John W. I. Lee of the University of California, Santa Barbara—a distinguished teacher and an expert on the long-buried secrets of the ancient world—takes the role of a history detective and examines Persian sources to reveal what we now know about this grand civilization. Tapping into the latest scholarship on the Persian Empire, this course is sure to fill in some critical gaps in your understanding and appreciation of the sweep of ancient history and its undeniable effect on later civilizations—including our own.

    But in 600 bce, the clay tablets that bore the story were lost--buried beneath ashes and ruins when the library of the wild king Ashurbanipal was sacked in a raid.The Buried Book begins with the rediscovery of the epic and its deciphering in 1872 by George Smith, a brilliant self-taught linguist who created a sensation when he discovered Gilgamesh among the thousands of tablets in the British Museum's collection. From there the story goes backward in time, all the way to Gilgamesh himself. Damrosch reveals the story as a literary bridge between East and West: a document lost in Babylonia, discovered by an Iraqi, decoded by an Englishman, and appropriated in novels by both Philip Roth and Saddam Hussein. This is an illuminating, fast-paced tale of history as it was written, stolen, lost, and--after 2,000 years, countless battles, fevered digs, conspiracies, and revelations--finally found.

    Today, however, the entire biblical tradition, including its historical veracity, is being challenged. Leading this assault is a group of scholars described as the "minimalist" or "revisionist" school of biblical studies, which charges that the Hebrew Bible is largely pious fiction, that its writers and editors invented "ancient Israel" as a piece of late Jewish propaganda in the Hellenistic era.In this fascinating book noted Syro-Palestinian archaeologist William G. Dever attacks the minimalist position head-on, showing how modern archaeology brilliantly illuminates both life in ancient Palestine and the sacred scriptures as we have them today. Assembling a wealth of archaeological evidence, Dever builds the clearest, most complete picture yet of the real Israel that existed during the Iron Age of ancient Palestine (1200–600 B.C.).Dever's exceptional reconstruction of this key period points up the minimalists' abuse of archaeology and reveals the weakness of their revisionist histories. Dever shows that ancient Israel, far from being an "invention," is a reality to be discovered. Equally important, his recovery of a reliable core history of ancient Israel provides a firm foundation from which to appreciate the aesthetic value and lofty moral aspirations of the Hebrew Bible.

    The Lost History of Christianity unveils a vast and forgotten network of the world's largest and most influential Christian churches that existed to the east of the Roman Empire. These churches and their leaders ruled the Middle East for centuries and became the chief administrators and academics in the new Muslim empire. The author recounts the shocking history of how these churches—those that had the closest link to Jesus and the early church—died.Jenkins takes a stand against current scholars who assert that variant, alternative Christianities disappeared in the fourth and fifth centuries on the heels of a newly formed hierarchy under Constantine, intent on crushing unorthodox views. In reality, Jenkins says, the largest churches in the world were the “heretics” who lost the orthodoxy battles. These so-called heretics were in fact the most influential Christian groups throughout Asia, and their influence lasted an additional one thousand years beyond their supposed demise.Jenkins offers a new lens through which to view our world today, including the current conflicts in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. Without this lost history, we lack an important element for understanding our collective religious past. By understanding the forgotten catastrophe that befell Christianity, we can appreciate the surprising new births that are occurring in our own time, once again making Christianity a true world religion.

    An overview of the ancient nation, from the days of the prophet Zoroaster to those of the Islamic Republic.

    This historical magnum opus covers 4,000 years of the extraordinary history of the Jews as a people, a culture, and a nation, showing the impact of Jewish character and imagination upon the world.

    The first volume of The Ptolemies Quartet, 'House of the Eagle', is a triumph of historical salvage that brings back to life a bizarre family.