Acclaimed writer James Reston, Jr., offers a gripping narrative of the epic battle that left Jerusalem in Muslim hands until the twentieth century, bringing an objective perspective to the gallantry, greed, and religious fervor that fueled the bloody clash between Christians and Muslims.As he recounts this rousing story, Reston brings to life the two legendary figures who led their armies against each other. He offers compelling portraits of Saladin, the wise and highly cultured leader who created a united empire, and Richard the Lionheart, the romantic personification of chivalry who emerges here in his full complexity and contradictions. From its riveting scenes of blood-soaked battles to its pageant of fascinating, larger-than-life characters, Warriors of God is essential history, history that helps us understand today's world.

    Examines the history and legacy of the warrior monks, discussing their successful capture of the city of Jerusalem during the Crusades, and their eventual demise.

    Discover Scotland region by region; from the culturally diverse and architecturally magnificent Glasgow to the peerless beauty of the highlands. Eyewitness Travel Guide: Scotland provides tips every visitor needs, from where to walk with Reindeers to how to tread the Malt whisky trail, with comprehensive listings of the best hotels, resorts, restaurants, and nightlife in each region for all budgets. There are 3D cutaways and floor-plans of all the must-see sites plus street-by-street maps of all the fascinating cities and towns of Scotland. With up-to-date information on getting around by boat, bus, or steam train and all the sights listed town by town, Eyewitness Travel Guide: Scotland explores the country's castles, lochs, fishing hot spots and famous golf courses, focusing on the best scenic routes from which to explore the rugged Scottish landscape.

    These thirty-six gripping lectures bring to life the many emperors of Rome from the turn of the 1st century to the transition to the Middle Ages. For more than five centuries, these emperors-a checkered mix of the wise, the brutal, and the unhinged-presided over a multi-ethnic empire that was nearly always at war.Professor Fagan takes you deep into ancient Rome, asking: How did this system of rule come about? What did it replace? And who were the colorful, cruel, and crafty men who filled the almost omnipotent post of emperor? One of the most intriguing questions about the emperorship is why it endured for so long.As you witness the reigns of the successive rulers unfold, you will see how the office evolved with the political forces that sustained it, becoming more and more tightly bound to the military. Each step toward despotism was taken with a view toward expedience. But when that step became the new normal, it paved the way for the next step, and so on. As you explore these questions, you'll also study the amalgam of eyewitness reports, later compilations, archaeological remains, and inscriptions on monuments and coins. Contemporary accounts, when available, are not necessarily to be trusted, which means you play the role of detective, sifting for the truth of this spellbinding era.

    His armies were ferocious, feared throughout Asia, Africa, and Europe. They blazed through Asia like a firestorm, razing cities, torturing captives, and massacring enemies. Anyone who dared defy Tamerlane was likely decapitated, and towers of bloody heads soon became chilling monuments to his power throughout Central Asia. By the end of his life, Tamerlane had imposed his iron rule, as well as a refined culture, over a vast territory-from Syria to India, from Siberia to the Mediterranean. Justin Marozzi traveled in the footsteps of this infamous and enigmatic emperor of Samarkand (in modern Uzbekistan) to tell the story of this cruel, cultivated, and powerful warrior.

    The result is a nuanced portrayal of a multifarious western world that was sharply divided between its northern and southern aspects. By also integrating the histories of the Islamic and Byzantine world into the main narrative, the text brings new life to the continuum of interaction--social, cultural, and intellectual, as well as commercial--that existed among all three societies. In addition, it describes ways in which the medieval Latin West attempted to understand the unified and rational structure of the human cosmos, which they believed existed beneath the observable diversity and disorder of the world. This effort to re-create a human ordering of unity through diversity provides an essential key to understanding medieval Europe and the ways in which it regarded and reacted to the worlds around it. The Worlds of Medieval Europe is an ideal text for undergraduate courses in medieval history, Western civilization, the history of Christianity, and Muslim-Christian relations. It also serves as an excellent supplement for courses on the history of a specific country in the medieval period, the history of medieval art, or the history of the European economy.

    The great heritage of western civilization - from the Greek and Roman classics to Jewish and Christian works - would have been utterly lost were it not for the holy men and women of unconquered Ireland. In this delightful and illuminating look into a crucial but little-known "hinge" of history, Thomas Cahill takes us to the "island of saints and scholars, " the Ireland of St. Patrick and the Book of Kells. Here, far from the barbarian despoliation of the continent, monks and scribes laboriously, lovingly, even playfully preserved the west's written treasures. With the return of stability in Europe, these Irish scholars were instrumental in spreading learning. Thus the Irish not only were conservators of civilization, but became shapers of the medieval mind, putting their unique stamp on western culture.

    After angry Protestants tossed three representatives of the Holy Roman Empire out the window of the royal castle in Prague, world war spread from Bohemia with similar abandon and relentless persistence, destroying European powers from Spain to Sweden as they marched on the contested soil of Germany. Fanatics, speculators, and ordinary people found themselves trapped in a nightmarish world of famine, disease, and seemingly unstoppable destruction. The Thirty Years War was a turning point in the making of modern Europe and the modern world: out of it came the system of nation-states that remains fundamental to international law. C.V. Wedgwood's magisterial book is the only comprehensive account of the war in English, as well as a triumph of scholarship and literature. Includes maps and charts.

    What begins with a peace match—the marriage of the twelve-year-old daughter of France's Philip IV to the dissolute Edward II in 1308—ends in bloody conflict, a possible regicide, the usurpation of royal power, execution, and exile. In a lively narrative that brings a fresh perspective to the history of Isabella's catastrophic marriage, Doherty illuminates the people, passions, and politics that prompted the young queen, after thirteen years, to flee the feckless, ineffectual king who had sacrificed the English army to ignominious and unnecessary defeat at Bannockburn and to escape court intrigues and her personal persecution by men like the sinister Hugh Despenser. At Isabella's command, though, Despenser eventually met a gruesome death, when she returned to England with the exiled Roger Mortimer and a mercenary army that deposed Edward and enthroned the conquering queen in the name of her young son, Edward III.

    The pages are populated with figures from myth, history, and the present-from Saint Patrick to Oliver Cromwell, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, and Charles Parnell to Sinead O'Connor and Bono. Some beloved, some controversial-each influenced the course of Irish and world history. While McCourt vividly describes Ireland's turbulent history, he also offers a cultural survey with fresh insights to the folklore, literature, art, music, and cuisine of Ireland, producing an irresistible tour through the Emerald Isle.

    In one compendious volume, The Mammoth Book of Kings and Queens offers the first royal biographical A-Z, its pages lavish in details on all the rulers of kingdoms within the British Isles, together with their wives or consorts, pretenders, usurpers, and regents.Turn to your favorite monarch -- be it Charles II, Queen Victoria, or even Henry VIII -- and you will find an amazing amount of fascinating information. Perhaps you want to know who among Britain's rulers holds royal records for the shortest or the longest reigns, the richest or poorest monarchies.You have more than a thousand sovereigns to browse through, from Queen Boadicea of the early Britons to Elizabeth II. You can learn of various trial and Saxon rulers prior to 1066, the rulers of Scotland and Wales, and the many kings of Ireland, whose lineage goes back even further than their mainland counterparts. Your discoveries may surprise you and will always keep you entertainingly informed.Author Mike Ashley presents in chronological order all the kings and queens of Britain as well as other powerful nobles and dignitaries; he includes, too, genealogies showing the family descent of all the leading royal families as a further bonus. The result is a superb and authoritative one-volume reference.

    But, as Leanda de Lisle’s gripping new history reveals, they are a family still more extraordinary than the one we thought we knew.The Tudor canon typically starts with the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, before speeding on to Henry VIII and the Reformation. But this leaves out the family’s obscure Welsh origins, the ordinary man known as Owen Tudor who would fall (literally) into a Queen’s lap—and later her bed. It passes by the courage of Margaret Beaufort, the pregnant thirteen-year-old girl who would help found the Tudor dynasty, and the childhood and painful exile of her son, the future Henry VII. It ignores the fact that the Tudors were shaped by their past—those parts they wished to remember and those they wished to forget.By creating a full family portrait set against the background of this past, de Lisle enables us to see the Tudor dynasty in its own terms, and presents new perspectives and revelations on key figures and events. De Lisle discovers a family dominated by remarkable women doing everything possible to secure its future; shows why the princes in the Tower had to vanish; and reexamines the bloodiness of Mary’s reign, Elizabeth’s fraught relationships with her cousins, and the true significance of previously overlooked figures. Throughout the Tudor story, Leanda de Lisle emphasizes the supreme importance of achieving peace and stability in a violent and uncertain world, and of protecting and securing the bloodline.Tudor is bristling with religious and political intrigue but at heart is a thrilling story of one family’s determined and flamboyant ambition.

    Examines how Richard came to power in 15th-century Britain & attempts to reconcile his ruthless political actions with his beneficent rule.Fortunes of a younger son, 1452-1471 Gloucester, Clarence & the court, 1471-1483The heir of Nevill: Richard duke of Gloucester & the north of EnglandThe road to the throne: the events of April to June 1483The fate of Edward IV's sons The rebellion of 1483 & its consequencesThe king in person The search for support The government of the realm Foreign policy & the defence of the realmAugust 1485

    But, after King Alfred ensured the survival of Wessex and his son Edward expanded it, his grandson Athelstan inherited the rule of both Mercia and Wessex, conquered Northumbria and was hailed as Rex totius Britanniae: ‘King of the whole of Britain’.Tom Holland recounts this extraordinary story with relish and drama, transporting us back to a time of omens, raven harbingers and blood-red battlefields. As well as giving form to the figure of Æthelstan - devout, shrewd, all too aware of the precarious nature of his power, especially in the north - he introduces the great figures of the age, including Alfred and his daughter Æthelflæd, ‘Lady of the Mercians’, who brought Æthelstan up at the Mercian court. Making sense of the family rivalries and fractious conflicts of the Anglo-Saxon rulers, Holland shows us how a royal dynasty rescued their kingdom from near-oblivion and fashioned a nation that endures to this day.

    Now available in a compact, more convenient format, it offers the same text and many of the illustrations which first appeared in the widely acclaimed Oxford Illustrated History of Medieval Europe. Written by expert scholars and based on the latest research, the book explores a period of profound diversity and change, focusing on all aspects of medieval history from the empires and kingdoms of Charlemagne and the Byzantines to the new nations which fought the Hundred Years War. The Oxford History of the Medieval World also examines such intriguing cultural subjects as the chivalric code of knights, popular festivals, and the proliferation of new art forms, and the catastrophic social effect of the Black Death. Authoritative and eminently readable, this book will entertain as much as it will educate.