We also hear how the most powerful position in the history of the Western world held a permanent appeal, despite its perils, with eager candidates constantly coming forward to seize the throne.Very few of the Roman emperors died a natural death. The insane Caligula was murdered after leaving the theatre; Caracalla while he was relieving himself. Caesar was stabbed twenty three times and Otho was dragged into the Tiber with a flesh-hook. However great an emperor's power, danger was ever present.Emperors Don't Die in Bed provides a clear history of the imperial succession as well as a compelling depiction of the intrigue and drama of Roman imperial politics.

    The Balkans in World Historyre-defines this space in positive terms, taking as a starting point the cultural, historical, and social threads that allow us to see this region as a coherent if complex whole. Eminent historian Andrew Wachtel here depicts the Balkans as that borderland geographical space in which four of theworld's greatest civilizations have overlapped in a sustained and meaningful way to produce a complex, dynamic, sometimes combustible, multi-layered local civilization. It is the space in which the cultures of ancient Greece and Rome, of Byzantium, of Ottoman Turkey, and of Roman Catholic Europemet, clashed and sometimes combined. The history of the Balkans is thus a history of creative borrowing by local people of the various civilizations that have nominally conquered the region. Encompassing Bulgaria, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, Macedonia, Greece, andEuropean Turkey, the Balkans have absorbed many voices and traditions, resulting in one of the most complex and interesting regions on earth.

    Making use of overlooked and new material from over 30 archives in half a dozen countries, 'D-Day' is a vivid and well-researched account yet of the battle of Normandy.

    The story’s focus is not on drama but on a bitter truth: both armies want nothing more than to stop fighting and go home. Achilles—the electrifying hero who is Homer’s brilliant creation—quarrels with his commander, Agamemnon, but eventually returns to the field to avenge a comrade’s death. Few warriors, in life or literature, have challenged their commanding officer and the rationale of the war they fought as fiercely as did Homer’s Achilles.Homer’s Iliad addresses the central questions defining the war experience of every age. Is a warrior ever justified in challenging his commander? Must he sacrifice his life for someone else’s cause? Giving his life for his country, does a man betray his family? Can death ever be compensated by glory? How is a catastrophic war ever allowed to start—and why, if all parties wish it over, can it not be ended?As she did in The Endurance and The Bounty, Caroline Alexander has taken apart a story we think we know and put it back together in a way that reveals what Homer really meant us to glean from his masterpiece. Written with the authority of a scholar and the vigor of a bestselling narrative historian, The War That Killed Achilles is a superb and utterly timely presentation of one of the timeless stories of our civilization.

    It was ruled for all that time by a succession of able kings, but broke down twice, before eventually succumbing to dynastic rivalries, and simultaneous external invasions and internal grasps for independence. The first king, Seleukos I, established a pattern of rule which was unusually friendly towards his subjects, and his policies promoted the steady growth of wealth and population in many areas which had been depopulated when he took them over. In particular the dynasty was active in founding cities from Asia Minor to Central Asia. Its work set the social and economic scene of the Middle East for many centuries to come. Yet these kings had to be warriors too as they defended their realm from jealous neighbors. John D Grainger's trilogy charts the rise and fall of this superpower of the ancient world.In the first volume, John D Grainger relates the remarkable twists of fortune and daring that saw Seleukos, an officer in an elite guard unit, emerge from the wars of the diadochi (Alexander's successors) in control of the largest and richest part of the empire of the late Alexander the Great. After his conquests and eventual murder, we then see how his successors continued his policies, including the repeated wars with the Ptolemaic rules of Egypt over control of Syria. The volume ends with the deep internal crisis and the wars of the brothers, which left only a single member of the dynasty alive in 223 BC.

    He had taken an army right through Spain and into what is now France, crossed the Alps (at a time of year when no one believed it possible), and invaded Italy. Then, for 15 years, he used the country as his battlefield and his home, destroying Roman armies with an almost contemptuous ease. For centuries after his death, Roman mothers would frighten their children into behaving by telling them: "Hannibal is at the Gates!" Even today, Hannibal stands as one of the greatest generals in the history of warfare and his battlefield tactics are still studied in military academies all over the world. Ernie Bradford presents a biography, exploring the strategies of his greatest triumphs and showing us Hannibal as the soldier, the general, the statesman and the private man - revealing a personal charisma and leadership ability that makes his presence still felt in every country bordering the Mediterranean.The Wordsworth Military Library covers the breadth of military history, including studies of individual leaders and accounts of major campaigns and great conflicts.

    An act of terrorism of staggering efficiency, it fulfilled its every aim: it would liberate Bosnia from Habsburg rule and it created a powerful new Serbia, but it also brought down four great empires, killed millions of men and destroyed a civilization. What made a seemingly prosperous and complacent Europe so vulnerable to the impact of this assassination? In The Sleepwalkers Christopher Clark retells the story of the outbreak of the First World War and its causes. Above all, it shows how the failure to understand the seriousness of the chaotic, near genocidal fighting in the Balkans would drag Europe into catastrophe.

    On the eve of the battle, a cross appeared to him in the sky with an exhortation, "By this sign conquer." Inscribing the cross on the shields of his soldiers, Constantine drove his rivals into the Tiber and claimed the imperial capital for himself. Under Constantine, Christianity emerged from the shadows, its adherents no longer persecuted. Constantine united the western and eastern halves of the Roman Empire. He founded a new capital city, Constantinople. Thereafter the Christian Roman Empire endured in the East, while Rome itself fell to the barbarian hordes. Paul Stephenson offers a nuanced and deeply satisfying account of a man whose cultural and spiritual renewal of the Roman Empire gave birth to the idea of a unified Christian Europe underpinned by a commitment to religious tolerance.

    Auden. What does Roman Britain mean to us now? How were its physical remains rediscovered and made sense of? How has it been reimagined, in story and song and verse?Charlotte Higgins has traced these tales by setting out to discover the remains of Roman Britain for herself, sometimes on foot, sometimes in a splendid, though not particularly reliable, VW camper van. Via accounts of some of Britain's most intriguing, and often unjustly overlooked ancient monuments, Under Another Sky invites us to see the British landscape, and British history, in an entirely fresh way: as indelibly marked by how the Romans first imagined, and wrote, these strange and exotic islands, perched on the edge of the known world, into existence.

    and A.D. 800, from the rise of Mycenaean civilization to the fall of Ravenna and the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. John Warry tells of an age of great military commanders such as Alexander the Great, Hannibal, and Julius Caesar - men whose feats of generalship still provide material for discussion and admiration in the military academies of the world.The text is complemented by a running chronology, 16 maps, 50 newly researched battle plans and tactical diagrams, and 125 photographs, 65 of them in color.

    His father, Hamilcar, was also a great strategist and master tactician who imposed Carthaginian rule over much of present-day Spain. After Hamilcar led the Carthaginian forces against Rome in the First Punic War, Hannibal followed in his father’s footsteps, leading Carthage in the Second Punic War.From the time he was a teenager, Hannibal fought against Rome. He is famed for leading Carthage’s army across north Africa, into Spain, along the Mediterranean coast, and then crossing the Alps with his army and war elephants. Hannibal won victories in northern Italy by outmaneuvering his Roman adversaries and defeated a larger Roman army at the battle of Cannae in 216 BC. Unable to force Rome to capitulate, he was eventually forced to leave Italy and return to Carthage when a savvy Roman general named Scipio invaded north Africa. Hannibal and Scipio fought an epic battle at Zama, which Hannibal lost. The terms of surrender were harsh and many Carthaginians blamed Hannibal, eventually forcing him into exile until his death.To this day Hannibal is still regarded as a military genius. Napoleon, George Patton, and Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr. are only some of the generals who studied and admired him. His strategy and tactics are still taught in military academies. He is one of the figures of the ancient world whose life and exploits never fail to impress. Historian Patrick N. Hunt has led archeological expeditions in the Alps and elsewhere to study Hannibal’s exploits. Now he brings Hannibal’s incredible story to life in this riveting and dramatic book.

    . . a scholarly and convenient presentation of a vast array of facts." -Times Literary Supplement In this well-written and well-researched social history, F. R. Cowell succeeds in making Life in Ancient Rome alive and dynamic. The combination of acute historical detail and supplementary illustrations makes this book perfectly suited for the student preparing to explore classics, as well as the tourist preparing to explore twentieth-century Rome. Lucid and engaging, Life in Ancient Rome is for anyone seeking familiarity with the greatness that was Rome.

    "Emperors of Rome" charts the 500 years that followed the death of Caesar and eventual triumph of Augustus, an era during which Rome reached heights of economic prosperity and cultural achievement, but also plumbed depths of anarchy, cruelty and chaos.

    One world had ended and a new, uncertain one was beginning. Regime change had come on a global scale: across Asia (including China, Korea, Indochina, and the Philippines, and of course Japan) and all of continental Europe. Out of the often vicious power struggles that ensued emerged the modern world as we know it.In human terms, the scale of transformation is almost impossible to imagine. Great cities around the world lay in ruins, their populations decimated, displaced, starving. Harsh revenge was meted out on a wide scale, and the ground was laid for much horror to come. At the same time, in the wake of unspeakable loss, the euphoria of the liberated was extraordinary, and the revelry unprecedented. The postwar years gave rise to the European welfare state, the United Nations, decolonization, Japanese pacifism, and the European Union. Social, cultural, and political "reeducation" was imposed on vanquished by victors on a scale that also had no historical precedent. Much that was done was ill advised, but in hindsight, as Ian Buruma shows us, these efforts were in fact relatively enlightened, humane, and effective.A poignant grace note throughout this history is Buruma's own father's story. Seized by the Nazis during the occupation of Holland, he spent much of the war in Berlin as a laborer, and by war's end was literally hiding in the rubble of a flattened city, having barely managed to survive starvation rations, Allied bombing, and Soviet shock troops when the end came. His journey home and attempted reentry into "normalcy" stand in many ways for his generation's experience.A work of enormous range and stirring human drama, conjuring both the Asian and European theaters with equal fluency, Year Zero is a book that Ian Buruma is perhaps uniquely positioned to write. It is surely his masterpiece.

    It is the single greatest event in all human history. Discover the fascinating origin of Rome and its mysterious Etruscan connections, its first faltering steps toward republican government, and its methodical subjugation of surrounding tribes. Slowly, the puritanical Roman Republic asserts control over all of Italy and in the process forges a political unity which proves enduring. That unity is sorely tested as Rome comes into conflict with Carthage and Hannibal, a horrifying ordeal which alters world history for all time. A resurgent Rome is next drawn into the intrigues of the eastern Mediterranean, finally conquering the Greek speaking world...only to end up surrendering itself to a seductive, decadent Hellenistic culture. A century of politcal tension and civil strife ensues. Follow the rise of powerful men like the brothers Tiberius and Caius Gracchus, Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Cicero and the greatest Roman of them all - Julius Caesar. With Caesar's assassination comes renewed civil war. The aristocratic senatorial faction is defeated and the Republican form of government is replaced by dictatorship. Caesar's adopted nephew, Augustus, comes to power as the first Roman Emperor and puts into place the most extraordinary experiment in imperial government ever attempted. In the process, he paves the way for a long period of peace, a golden age, the likes of which has never before been seen. The Empire is ruled by one dynasty after another - some good, some bad - until it reaches its apogee during the age of the brilliant Antonine emperors. But chaos follows with a series of corrupt rulers, and only the strong leadership of Diocletion 85 years later brings stability. Shortly afterward, Constantine's rule promotes the new faith of Christianity and makes it the official religion of the empire. But the downward spiral of decay cannot be reversed. Economic disruptions, plague and barbarian invasions prove too much for Rome, and the western half of the empire descends into a maelstrom of ignorance, dispair and random violence from which it will not emerge for many centuries.