Maine's largest city is celebrated in this concise narrative history, abundantly illustrated, with a lengthy and informative timeline of key events, and featuring two dozen biographical profiles of important Portland people. "Who knew so many surprises could await a reader? Destroyed by four nations, birthplace to both national heroes and villains, burned, reborn, and still building anew in the twenty-first century, one of America's most surprising small cities comes to life in this bright, brisk history." -Rep. Herb Adams, historian and Maine State Legislator

The Byzantine Empire was one of the most impressive imperial adventures in history. It ruled much of Europe and Asia Minor for a remarkable eleven hundred years. From Constantine's establishment of Byzantium (renamed Constantinople) as his capital in 324 CE, until the fall of the city to the Ottomans in the fifteenth century, the Byzantines became a powerhouse of literature, art, theology, medicine, law and learning. Dionysios Stathakopoulos here tells a compelling story of military conquest, alliance and reversal, including the terrifying secret weapon of 'Greek fire'. His new short history...

Few documents in world history can match the inspirational impact of the New Testament. For all its variety - gospels, letters and visions - this first-century collection of texts keeps always at its centre the enigmatic figure of Joshua/Jesus: the Jewish prophet who gathered a group around him, proclaimed the imminent end of the world, but was made captive by the authorities of Rome only to suffer a shameful criminal's death on a cross. When his followers (including former persecutor Saul/Paul) became convinced that Jesus had defeated extinction, and had risen again to fresh life, the...

Classical Greece and its legacy have long inspired a powerful and passionate fascination. The civilization that bequeathed to later ages drama and democracy, Homer and heroism, myth and Mycenae and the Delphic Oracle and the Olympic Games has, perhaps more than any other, helped shape the intellectual contours of the modern world. P J Rhodes is among the most distinguished historians of antiquity. In this elegant, zesty new survey he explores the archaic (8th-early 5th centuries BCE), classical (5th and 4th centuries BCE) and Hellenistic (late 4th-mid-2nd centuries BCE) periods up to the...

Few documents in world history can match the inspirational impact of the New Testament. For all its variety - gospels, letters and visions - this first-century collection of texts keeps always at its centre the enigmatic figure of Joshua/Jesus: the Jewish prophet who gathered a group around him, proclaimed the imminent end of the world, but was made captive by the authorities of Rome only to suffer a shameful criminal's death on a cross. When his followers (including former persecutor Saul/Paul) became convinced that Jesus had defeated extinction, and had risen again to fresh life, the...

The Battle of Hastings in 1066 is the one date forever seared on the British national psyche. It enabled the Norman Conquest that marked the end of Anglo-Saxon England, but there was much more to the Normans than the invading army Duke William shipped over from Normandy to the shores of Sussex. How a band of marauding warriors established some of the most powerful kingdoms in Europe in Sicily and France, as well as England is an improbably romantic idea. In exploring Norman culture in all its regions, Leonie V Hicks places the Normans in the context of early medieval society. Her comparative...

The extraordinary creative energy of Renaissance Italy lies at the root of modern Western culture. In her elegant new introduction, Virginia Cox offers a fresh vision of this iconic moment in European cultural history, when between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries Italy led the world in painting, building, science and literature. Her book explores key artistic, literary and intellectual developments, but also histories of food and fashion, map-making, exploration and anatomy. Alongside towering figures such as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Petrarch, Machiavelli and Isabella...

"Here lies our leader all cut down, the valiant man in the dust." The elegiac words of the Battle of Maldon, an epic poem written to celebrate the bravery of an English army defeated by Viking raiders in 991. They emerge from a diverse literature-including Beowulf and Bede's Ecclesiastical History-produced by the peoples known as the Anglo-Saxons: Germanic tribes who migrated to Britain from Lower Saxony and Denmark in the early fifth century CE. The era once known as the 'Dark Ages' was marked by stunning cultural advances. Here, Henrietta Leyser offers a fresh analysis of exciting recent...

The Phoenicians present a tantalizing face to the ancient historian. Latin sources suggest they once had an extensive literature of history, law, philosophy and religion; but all now is lost. Offering new insights based on recent archaeological discoveries in their heartland of modern-day Lebanon, Mark Woolmer presents a fresh appraisal of this fascinating, yet elusive, Semitic people. Discussing material culture, language and alphabet, religion (including sacred prostitution of women and boys to the goddess Astarte), funerary custom and trade and expansion into the Punic west, he explores...

The years of the Spanish Civil War filled twentieth-century Spain with hope, frustration and drama. Not only did it pit countryman against countryman, and neighbour against neighbour, but from 1936-39 this bitterly contended struggle sucked in competing and seemingly atavistic forces that were soon to rage across the face of Europe, and then the rest of the world: nationalism and republicanism; communism and fascism; anarchism and monarchism; anti-clerical reformism and aristocratic Catholic conservatism. The 'Guerra Civil' is of enduring interest precisely because it represents much more...