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Category Archives: read
A Short History of Ethics
A couple of years ago I stuck “History of Ethics” into Amazon and it came back with a two-volume tome by Vernon J. Bourke. I bought it and read it, to the end, on the principle that, once you’ve started, … Continue reading
The First Philosophers
This anthology, edited by the Greek scholar Robin Waterfield, consists of a series of extracts, with commentary, from the work of a number of Greek thinkers who lived in the couple of centuries before the first megastar of western philosophy, … Continue reading
The Epic of Gilgamesh
This is pretty much the oldest book in the world, which makes the idea of a review seem somewhat superfluous; still. Somebody gave it to me; I sighed at the prospect of wading through it. But it is short – … Continue reading
Byzantium: The Decline and Fall
The last in the series is an ever-more dizzying whirligig of passing characters and incidents, few of them with enough purchase for this to be more than a shallow parade. Maybe that is the nature of the subject matter, given … Continue reading
Byzantium: The Apogee
Second volume: more of the same, equally entertaining and well-written, with the same caveats. Most monstrous character: Basil the Macedonian, who maneuvered himself from stable boy to imperial confidant to Michael III, murdered the emperor’s uncle (who had effectively been … Continue reading
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Tagged book review, Byzantium, Greek Orthodox, Istanbul, Roman Empire
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Byzantium: The Early Centuries
John Julius Norwich, author of this history of the Eastern Roman Empire from the founding of Constantinople in 330 until the coronation in 800 in Rome by the Pope of Charlemagne as rival Emperor of the West, is a jolly … Continue reading
Posted in read
Tagged book review, Byzantium, Greek Orthodox, Istanbul, Roman Empire
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Istanbul: The Imperial City
This book about Byzantium/Constantinople/Istanbul, by the American teacher John Freely, is a curious read. It purports to be a chronological history of the city, yet is in fact mostly a string of anecdotes about the doings of its sometime rulers … Continue reading
The Turks in World History
This book by Carter Vaughn Findley of Ohio State University (whose Wikipedia page is in Turkish), traces the movement of the Turkic and Turkish peoples through history from the earliest records of steppe nomads on the margins of ancient empires … Continue reading
when baghdad ruled the muslim world
In January I read Hugh Kennedy’s book about the great Arab conquests, which burst rough-necked upon the world at the very moment when the heavyweight, overweight Sassanid and Byzantine empires were punch-drunk from 30 years of grueling mutual warfare, destroying … Continue reading
The First Dynasty of Islam
This history by G R Hawting (School of Oriental and African Studies, London) of the Umayyad Dynasty, who seized power in 661 after Ali, the last of the Rashidun (“rightly-guided” caliphs, the immediate successors to the Prophet), was murdered, and … Continue reading
