Thread: FREE/BARGAIN — Non-Fiction
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Old 09-25-2020, 01:43 PM   #1938
sufue
lost in my e-reader...
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After reading a nice review in The Economist of the upcoming Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe by Judith Herrin, I was checking on that book when I found another book by the same author, Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire. It too sounds pretty interesting, and has 4.4 stars on more than a hundred ratings, and it's only £1.99 at Kindle UK right now. (Sadly, it's over $13 at Kindle US.)

I haven't decided whether to buy this one, given that I've already read at least three other histories of Byzantium, although I've read none on Ravenna , so will definitely keep an eye out for that to go on sale. But still Byzantium seemed worth posting, since £1.99 is a pretty good price on reasonably well-rated non-fiction.

Kindle UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B002RI9IV0
Kindle UK/Smile: https://smile.amazon.co.uk/dp/B002RI9IV0

Spoiler:
Quote:
For a thousand years an extraordinary empire made possible Europe's transition to the modern world: Byzantium. An audacious and resilient but now little known society, it combined orthodox Christianity with paganism, classical Greek learning with Roman power, to produce a great and creative civilization which for centuries held in check the armies of Islam.

Judith Herrin's concise and compelling book replaces the standard chronological approach of most histories of Byzantium. Instead, each short chapter is focused on a theme, such as a building (the great church of Hagia Sophia), a clash over religion (iconoclasm), sex and power (the role of eunuchs), an outstanding Byzantine individual (the historian Anna Komnene), a symbol of civilization (the fork), a battle for territory (the crusades). In this way she makes accessible and understandable the grand sweeps of Byzantine history, from the founding of its magnificent capital Constantinople (modern Istanbul) in 330, to its fall to the Ottoman Turks in 1453.


Oh, and if you want to read the review of Herrin's upcoming book on Ravenna in The Economist, here's a link: https://www.economist.com/books-and-...ded-in-ravenna
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