eShop USA > Books > Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire
Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire
List Price: $29.95Our Price: $19.77 You Save: $10.18 (34%)Prices subject to change.
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 949.502
EAN: 9780691131511
ISBN: 0691131511
Label: Princeton University Press
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 440
Publication Date: February 03, 2008
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Studio: Princeton University Press
Related Items: Featured Listmania!
Editorial Review:Byzantium. The name evokes grandeur and exoticism--gold, cunning, and complexity. In this unique book, Judith Herrin unveils the riches of a quite different civilization. Avoiding a standard chronological account of the Byzantine Empire's millennium--long history, she identifies the fundamental questions about Byzantium--what it was, and what special significance it holds for us today. Bringing the latest scholarship to a general audience in accessible prose, Herrin focuses each short chapter around a representative theme, event, monument, or historical figure, and examines it within the full sweep of Byzantine history--from the foundation of Constantinople, the magnificent capital city built by Constantine the Great, to its capture by the Ottoman Turks. She argues that Byzantium's crucial role as the eastern defender of Christendom against Muslim expansion during the early Middle Ages made Europe--and the modern Western world--possible. Herrin captivates us with her discussions of all facets of Byzantine culture and society. She walks us through the complex ceremonies of the imperial court. She describes the transcendent beauty and power of the church of Hagia Sophia, as well as chariot races, monastic spirituality, diplomacy, and literature. She reveals the fascinating worlds of military usurpers and ascetics, eunuchs and courtesans, and artisans who fashioned the silks, icons, ivories, and mosaics so readily associated with Byzantine art. An innovative history written by one of our foremost scholars, Byzantium reveals this great civilization's rise to military and cultural supremacy, its spectacular destruction by the Fourth Crusade, and its revival and final conquest in 1453.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire
This is an excellent book for those interested in all things Byzantine. It is a well-researched, scholarly work. I highly recommend it!
Rating:  - Old-fashioned, clunky, with dismaying lapses
This book may, as its newspaper reviews suggest, fill a need for a general reader's overview of Byzantium, but it doesn't do it very well. I doubt the "two men in hard hats", whose curiosity (Herrin says) originally motivated her to write it, would be much stimulated or enlightened by the instant descent into theology (full of Greek terms regarding the nature of God) and architecture (equally full of narthices and pendentives). Theology and architecture (especially the former) are vital for understanding ... Read More
Rating:  - A Good Survey of the Subject
Because the Byzantine Empire lasted 1,129 years (from Constantine's founding of Constantinople in 324 AD to Sultan Mehmet II's capture of the city in 1453), the historian writing about the empire faces a daunting task. Write about it in the traditional chronological manner, and space limitations will force a laundry list approach with little meaningful content.
What Judith Herrin (a professor of Late Antique and Byzantine Studies at King's College, London) has elected to do instead is to break ... Read More
Rating: - Quick Depth
Judith Herren's study of Byzantium is a quick jaunt into the stream of history for the novice or expert. Anecdotal but thorough, the book sweeps through more than a thousand years of history without pausing for tendentiousness. A fine book.
Rating: - Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire
Well written and easy to read. Some interesting insights that I have not read in detailed accounts of Byzantine history.
Related Categories:
| |
 |
