Medieval

Narrated by Derek Perkins From a renowned historian who writes with "maximum vividness" (The New Yorker) comes the most authoritative, readable single-volume military history of the brutal struggle for the Holy Land. Nine hundred years ago, a vast Christian army, summoned to holy war by the Pope...

Rares sont ceux qui n'ont pas entendu parler des redoutables Vikings et de leurs audacieux exploits. Ces navigateurs du Nord, le fléau du Moyen Âge, ont marqué l'histoire du monde d'une manière grandiose.

The Mongol army led by Genghis Khan subjugated more lands and people in 25 years than the Romans did in 400....

In this 12-lecture course that corrects the record on a transformative period in world history, professor and prolific Viking Age scholar Jennifer Paxton unpack the scope and scale of Viking exploits in Europe.

The Gilded Page is the story of the written word in the manuscript age. Rich and surprising, it shows how the most exquisite objects ever made by human hands came from unexpected places....

The definitive history of a powerful family dynasty who dominated Europe for centuries—from their rise to power to their eventual downfall. "A feat of both scholarship and storytelling." —Wall Street Journal In The Habsburgs, Martyn Rady tells the epic story of a dynasty and the world it...

In House of Lilies, historian Justine Firnhaber-Baker tells the epic story of the Capetian dynasty of medieval France, showing how their ideas about power, religion, and identity continue to shape European society and politics today. Reigning from 987 to 1328, the Capetians became the most...

The gripping true story of the “duel to end all duels” in medieval France that pits a knight against a squire accused of violating the knight’s beautiful young wife....

In this major and wholly original contribution to military history, John Keegan reverses the usual convention of writing about war in terms of generals and nations in conflict....

Joseph Toussaint Reinaud retrace, avec l’érudition d’un historien du XIXe siècle, les invasions dites « sarrazines » en France, ainsi que les mouvements de France vers la Savoie, le Piémont et la Suisse.

Ils ont commencé comme pèlerins, ont combattu comme moines guerriers, se sont enrichis comme banquiers et ont fini sur le bûcher comme hérétiques : Dan Jones...

This riveting audiobook narrated by Phyllida Nash traces the history of the city that led the West out of the ruins of the Roman Empire....

How the Mongol invasions of the Near East reshaped the balance of world power in the Middle Ages For centuries, the Crusades have been central to the story of the medieval Near East, but these religious wars are only part of the region's complex history. As The Mongol Storm reveals, during the...

This history by Charles Oman is a catalog of good, bad, and indifferent emperors who either pushed Byzantine Civilization to new heights or savagely drove it to defeat and dissolution....

The Song of Roland is acknowledged today as the first masterpiece of French vernacular literature and one of the world’s greatest epic poems....

For many, the medieval world seems dark and foreign - a miraculous, brutal, and irrational time of superstition and strange relics. The pursuit of heretics, the Inquisition, the Crusades, and the domination of the "Holy Land" come to mind. Yet the medieval world produced much that is part of our...

Triumph and tragedy, love and loss, murder and malice in the lives of five fifteenth-century queens The fifteenth century was a turbulent age: the Hundred Years War between England and France, and the Wars of the Roses dominated the lives of people both inside and out of the royal courts. Joan...

About empty thrones, a lot can be said. Throughout history, both ancient and near modern, a lack of an heir and the sudden death of a beloved monarch always meant trouble. When the position of a king is up for grabs, a lot of eager hands come forward.

“Powerful, rich with details, moving, humane, and full of important lessons for an age when weapons of mass destruction are loose among us.” — Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb The Great Plague is one of the most compelling events in human...

By no means prepared by birth, education, or training for leadership, Wallace nevertheless rose to prominence during the Wars of Independence, leading forces which broke the sequence of English victories and re-energizing and inspiring his countrymen in the process. While others, ostensibly his...