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The Early Middle Ages-the years from A.D. 650 to 1000-were crucial to Europe's future social and political development. These 24 lectures trace a journey from Scandinavia across northern and central Europe to the farthest reaches of the Byzantine and Islamic empires, providing an exciting new look an era often simply called the "Dark Ages."

One of the Telegraph's 'Greatest Books of 2025' 'Superb' Telegraph 'There's a real sense of peace and magic in this beautiful book' Daisy Buchanan 'Utterly endearing' Dr James Canton 'A fantastic book for weird walkers and megalith-obsessives alike' Weird Walk 'I was alternately gripped and...

Homer's Iliad is the famous epic poem set among the tales of Troy. Its subject is the anger of the hero Achilles and its consequences for the warring Greeks and Trojans. Unlike other books on the Iliad, this one combines the detailed expertise of a historian with the sensitivity of a teacher of it as poetry. Lane Fox goes on to consider hallmarks of the poem, its values, implicit and explicit, its characters, its women, its gods and even its horses. He argues repeatedly for its beautiful observation and addresses its parallel use of what is, to us, the natural world.

Paleoanthropologist Silvana Condemi and science journalist François Savatier tell the Denisovans’ story in The Secret World of Denisovans. Leading us through the excavation of Denisova cave, the sequencing of the Denisovan genome, and recent research on Denisovan fossils, Condemi and Savatier uncover how the Denisovans migrated to Asia, who they interacted with along the way, and why traces of Denisovan DNA can be found in modern-day humans.

In ancient Rome, all the best stories have one thing in common—murder. In one 50-year period, 26 emperors were murdered. But what did killing mean in a city where gladiators fought to the death to sate a crowd? In A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Emma Southon examines a trove of real-life homicides from Roman history to explore Roman culture, including how perpetrator, victim, and the act itself were regarded by ordinary people. Inside ancient Rome’s darkly fascinating history, we see how the Romans viewed life and death and what it means to be human.

Taking us along the sandy caravan routes of Morocco to the freezing winters of the northern Black Sea, from Co-Loa in the Red River valley of Vietnam to the rain-lashed forts south of Hadrian’s Wall, Owen Rees explores the powerful empires and diverse peoples in Europe, Asia and Africa beyond the reaches of Greece and Rome. In doing so, he offers us a new, brilliantly rich lens with which to understand the ancient world.

Discover the prodigious global influence of il bel paese in this star-studded retelling of Italy's past-from a foremost author of historic Italy. The Shortest History books deliver thousands of years of history in one riveting, fast-paced book.

Sometime around 56 AD, the apostle Paul wrote to the church in Rome. His letter was arguably his theological masterpiece, and has continued to shape Christian faith ever since. He entrusted this letter to Phoebe, the deacon of the church at Cenchreae; in writing to the church that almost surely...

These 24 dramatic lectures examine key events from ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome to medieval Europe and Asia. Spanning thousands of years and three continents, this course illuminates fascinating historical dramas on the individual scale.

The life and thought of Diogenes the Cynic, an iconoclastic philosopher who pioneered a brash and free-thinking vision of life that inspired the philosophy of Stoicism—“a rich, engaging portrait of intellectual fearlessness” (Stacy Schiff, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Cleopatra) In...

When Alexander the Great died at the age of 32, his empire stretched from the Adriatic Sea in the west all the way to modern-day India in the east. In an unusual compromise, his two heirs - a mentally damaged half brother, Philip III, and an infant son, Alexander IV, born after his death - were jointly granted the kingship. But six of Alexander's Macedonian generals, spurred by their own thirst for power and the legend that Alexander bequeathed his rule "to the strongest," fought to gain supremacy.  

This book follows Agrippina as a daughter born to the expected heir to Augustus’ throne and who was then orphaned; as a sister to Caligula, who raped his sisters and showered them with honours until they attempted rebellion against him and were exiled; as a seductive niece and then wife to Claudius, who gave her access to near unlimited power; and then as a mother to Nero, who adored her until he killed her. She was 44 when she died.

"A dauntingly ambitious, obsessively researched" (Los Angeles Times) global history of music that reveals how songs have shifted societies and sparked revolutions. Histories of music overwhelmingly suppress stories of the outsiders and rebels who created musical revolutions and instead celebrate...

In 1887, an Egyptian woman made an astonishing discovery among the ruins of the heretic king Akhenaten's capital city, a site now known as Amarna. She found a cache of cuneiform tablets, nearly four hundred in all, that included correspondence between the pharaohs and the mightiest powers of the day, such as the Hittites, Babylonians, and Assyrians. Love, War, and Diplomacy tells the story of the Amarna Letters and the dramatic world of the Bronze Age they revealed.

In the early days of ancient Greece, queer love was celebrated. The most famous warrior in antiquity loved another man, the poet whose lyrics were memorised by philosophers and kings sang of her desire for women. Men could swear oaths of undying love and live out the rest of their lives together in peace. What fragments survive of this ancient world all tell us one thing: it was not a sin to be queer.

Born into an era of heroes, a prophecy claims that Psyche - Princess of Mycenae - will defeat a monster feared even by the gods themselves. Rebelling against society's traditions, she spends her youth mastering blade and bow, preparing to fulfil her destiny. But she is soon caught up in powers beyond her control, when the jealous Aphrodite sends the God of Desire, Eros, to deliver a fatal love-curse. 

From the New York Times bestselling author of Misquoting Jesus comes a surprising history of Jesus’ most radical commandment—a new kind of altruism—tracing how the extraordinary duty to love even those who are strangers to us has shaped our world and our lives. When we donate money to...

In this electrifying social and intellectual history, Paula Fredriksen answers the question of how Jewish missionaries ended up inaugurating a movement that would grow into the gentile church by reconstructing the life of the earliest Jerusalem community. As her account arcs from this group’s hopeful celebration of Passover with Jesus, through their bitter controversies that fragmented the movement’s midcentury missions, to the city’s fiery end in the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, she brings this vibrant apostolic community to life.

Listeners can discover all the foul facts about the Groovy Greeks, including why girls ran about naked pretending to be bears, who had the world's first flushing toilet and why dedicated doctors tasted their patients' ear wax!

For most of human history, life offered no safety net. Environments shifted, resources vanished, and stability was always temporary. People lived on the move—carrying knowledge, forming bonds, and adapting to constant change. This audiobook examines how human life took shape long before familiar societies appeared. Drawing on archaeology, anthropology, and evolutionary science, it explores how early humans lived, moved, cooperated, and adapted over deep time.