Post: #1

This book is a bit old - published first in 1966 - but it reads like a novel!

The author himself was a professor at King's College, London, having studied classics and lived in Greece. The writing style is vivid and engaging, and even though some topics didn't always find me at my most interested, the book captured my imagination and was a welcome break for my other chores.

The book covers in about 25 chapters all the Emperors of Byzantium, the Eastern Roman Empire, from the time of Heraclius to the end of the House of Macedonia and the succession of disasters that succeeded the end of that dynasty. The author does not pretend to veil his personal judgment of the merits of one Emperor or the other, but each opinion is well-justified, and the writing itself is so illuminating, rather this and then at least have SOME reference point for that exciting epoch than to remain in the dark. I will definitely be reading more on this topic in the future, and that will be easier than ever to integrate into what I've already read, thanks to Jenkins.

Besides being an easy read, the book is, obviously, Emperor-centric, so we are spared in-depth social-economic analyses (there are some shallow ones, and he also offers a boiled-down summary of the the East-West schism of 1054) that would also be interesting to me, but no one here pretends that was the purpose of this book. It does what good writing is supposed to do: take a topic of importance, even of relevance today (his analysis on the sources of Byzantine weakness have clear parallels to today's West), and brings it to roaring life, enthralling the reader all the while. The book is 360 pages of good reading, so it is easily consumed in a weekend.

Post: #2

John Juilius Norwich has a trilogy on the history of Byzantium titles "Byzantium". Covers a huge time frame and still reads like a novel. An absolutely fascinating place. He also has a book on the short history.

Post: #3

Thanks! Will make a note of that.

Post: #4

I'm a book collector and started a small Byzantine collection. It sort of ended the first time I went to Asia. They are in storage, but I think I had four by Norwich: three volumes and one edited version spanning all three.

lowbudgetballer