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Fallen Glory
- The Lives and Deaths of History's Greatest Buildings
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 20 hrs and 30 mins
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Publisher's summary
An inviting, fascinating compendium of 21 of history's most famous lost places, from the Tower of Babel to the Twin Towers.
Buildings are more like us than we realize. They can be born into wealth or poverty, enjoying every privilege or struggling to make ends meet. They have parents - gods, kings and emperors, governments, visionaries and madmen - as well as friends and enemies. They have duties and responsibilities. They can endure crises of faith and purpose. They can succeed or fail. They can live. And, sooner or later, they die.
In Fallen Glory, James Crawford uncovers the biographies of some of the world's most fascinating lost and ruined buildings, from the dawn of civilization to the cyber era. The lives of these iconic structures are packed with drama and intrigue. Soap operas on the grandest scale, they feature war and religion, politics and art, love and betrayal, catastrophe and hope. Frequently their afterlives have been no less dramatic - their memories used and abused down the millennia for purposes both sacred and profane. They provide the stage for a startling array of characters, including Gilgamesh, the Cretan Minotaur, Agamemnon, Nefertiti, Genghis Khan, Henry VIII, Catherine the Great, Adolf Hitler, and even Bruce Springsteen.
The 21 structures Crawford focuses on include The Tower of Babel, The Temple of Jerusalem, The Library of Alexandria, The Bastille, Kowloon Walled City, the Berlin Wall, and the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. Ranging from the deserts of Iraq, the banks of the Nile, and the cloud forests of Peru to the great cities of Jerusalem, Istanbul, Paris, Rome, London, and New York, Fallen Glory is a unique guide to a world of vanished architecture.
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-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 146
From the Koran to Shakespeare, this city with three names - Byzantium, Constantinople, Istanbul - resonates as an idea and a place, real and imagined. Standing as the gateway between East and West, North and South, it has been the capital city of the Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman Empires. For much of its history it was the very center of the world, known simply as "The City", but, as Bettany Hughes reveals, Istanbul is not just a city but a global story.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A daunting undertaking pulled off superlatively
- By SGS on 12-24-17
By: Bettany Hughes
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The Nile: Travelling Downriver Through Egypt's Past and Present
- The Vintage Departures Series
- By: Toby Wilkinson
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim
- Length: 12 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 35
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 32
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 31
The Nile, like all of Egypt, is both timeless and ever-changing. In this audio, renowned Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson takes us on a journey downriver that is both history and travelogue. We begin at the First Nile Cataract, close to the modern city of Aswan. From there, Wilkinson guides us through the illustrious nation birthed by this great river.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A Riverboat Cruise from the luxury of your phone
- By Amazon Customer on 02-20-20
By: Toby Wilkinson
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Walls
- A History of Civilization in Blood and Brick
- By: David Frye
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 116
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 98
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Story5 out of 5 stars 99
With Frye as our raconteur-guide, we journey back to a time before barriers of brick and stone even existed - to an era in which nomadic tribes vied for scarce resources, and each man was bred to a life of struggle. Ultimately, those same men would create edifices of mud, brick, and stone and with them effectively divide humanity: On one side were those the walls protected; on the other, those the walls kept out. The stars of this narrative are the walls themselves - rising up in places as ancient and exotic as Mesopotamia, Babylon, Greece, China, Rome, Mongolia, Afghanistan, the lower Mississippi, and even Central America....
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5 out of 5 stars
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The code for history
- By veronica d on 03-14-23
By: David Frye
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Jungle of Stone
- The True Story of Two Men, Their Extraordinary Journey, and the Discovery of the Lost Civilization of the Maya
- By: William Carlsen
- Narrated by: Paul Michael Garcia
- Length: 16 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 607
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 542
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 545
In 1839 rumors of extraordinary yet baffling stone ruins buried within the unmapped jungles of Central America reached two of the world's most intrepid travelers. Seized by the reports, American diplomat John Lloyd Stephens and British artist Frederick Catherwood sailed together out of New York Harbor on an expedition into the forbidding rainforests of present-day Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico. What they found would rewrite the West's understanding of human history.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Unsung Explorers at the Heart of History
- By thomas on 01-10-17
By: William Carlsen
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Istanbul
- City of Majesty at the Crossroads of the World
- By: Thomas F. Madden
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 14 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 270
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 237
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 237
For more than two millennia, Istanbul has stood at the crossroads of the world, perched at the very tip of Europe, gazing across the shores of Asia. The history of this city - known as Byzantium, then Constantinople, now Istanbul - is at once glorious, outsized, and astounding. Founded by the Greeks, its location blessed it as a center for trade but also made it a target of every empire in history, from Alexander the Great and his Macedonian Empire, to the Romans and later the Ottomans.
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1 out of 5 stars
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A History Without People
- By SeanO on 04-02-19
By: Thomas F. Madden
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Lotharingia
- A Personal History of Europe's Lost Country
- By: Simon Winder
- Narrated by: Jonathan Cowley
- Length: 18 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 101
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 88
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Story4 out of 5 stars 88
Following Germania and Danubia, the third installment in Simon Winder's personal history of Europe. In 843 AD, the three surviving grandsons of the great emperor Charlemagne met at Verdun. After years of bitter squabbles over who would inherit the family land, they finally decided to divide the territory and go their separate ways. In a moment of staggering significance, one grandson inherited the area we now know as France, another Germany, and the third received the piece in between: Lotharingia.
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1 out of 5 stars
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The Loquacious Traveler in Middle Earth
- By Doris on 11-22-19
By: Simon Winder
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Lost Cities, Ancient Tombs
- 100 Discoveries That Changed the World
- By: Ann R. Williams - editor, Douglas Preston - introduction
- Narrated by: Mari Weiss
- Length: 14 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 74
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 61
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 61
Blending high adventure with history, this chronicle of 100 astonishing discoveries from the Dead Sea Scrolls to the fabulous “Lost City of the Monkey God” tells incredible stories of how explorers and archaeologists have uncovered the clues that illuminate our past.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Just what I wanted
- By Amazon Customer on 01-16-22
By: Ann R. Williams - editor, and others
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Rome
- By: Matthew Kneale
- Narrated by: Neil Gardner
- Length: 12 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 42
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 39
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 39
Rome, the Eternal City. Today visitors can stand on bridges that Julius Caesar and Cicero crossed; walk around temples in the footsteps of emperors; visit churches from the earliest days of Christianity. This is all the more remarkable considering what the city has endured. It has been ravaged by fires, floods, earthquakes, and - most of all - by roving armies. Matthew Kneale uses seven of these crisis moments to create a powerful and captivating account of Rome’s extraordinary history. He paints portraits of the city before each assault, describing how Romans, both rich and poor, lived their everyday lives.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Lack of language skills an irritation
- By lmc on 07-16-18
By: Matthew Kneale
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The Fisherman's Tomb
- The True Story of the Vatican's Secret Search
- By: John O'Neill, Sarah Wynne, Katie Clark
- Narrated by: Paul Michael
- Length: 4 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 423
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 385
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Story5 out of 5 stars 386
In 1939, a team of workers beneath the Vatican unearthed an early Christian grave. This surprising discovery launched a secret quest that would last decades a quest to discover the long-lost burial place of the Apostle Peter. From earliest times, Christian tradition held that Peter, a lowly fisherman from Galilee, whom Christ made leader of his church was executed in Rome by Emperor Nero and buried on Vatican Hill. But his tomb had been lost to history. Now, funded anonymously by a wealthy American, a small army of workers embarked on the dig of a lifetime.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Great narrator
- By Fran on 09-10-18
By: John O'Neill, and others
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Conquistadors
- By: Michael Wood
- Narrated by: John Telfer
- Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 591
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 505
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 499
Following in the footsteps of the greatest Spanish adventurers, Michael Wood retraces the path of the conquistadors from Amazonia to Lake Titicaca, and from the deserts of North Mexico to the heights of Machu Picchu. As he travels the same routes as Hernán Cortés, Francisco, and Gonzalo Pizarro, Wood describes the dramatic events that accompanied the epic sixteenth-century Spanish conquest of the Aztec and Inca empires.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Horrific anti-European bias
- By Anonymous User on 08-30-20
By: Michael Wood
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The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt
- By: Toby Wilkinson
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 18 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,051
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 911
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 906
In this landmark work, one of the world's most renowned Egyptologists tells the epic story of this great civilization, from its birth as the first nation-state to its final absorption into the Roman Empire - 3,000 years of wild drama, bold spectacle, and unforgettable characters. Award-winning scholar Toby Wilkinson captures not only the lavish pomp and artistic grandeur of this land of pyramids and pharaohs but for the first time reveals the constant propaganda and repression that were its foundations.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Well Written and Detailed
- By Matthew G. on 01-26-18
By: Toby Wilkinson
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The Buried Book
- The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh
- By: David Damrosch
- Narrated by: William Hughes
- Length: 7 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 350
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 270
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Story4 out of 5 stars 266
One day in 1872, self-taught Assyriologist George Smith was sifting through a pile of clay tablets when he realized he was reading about "a flood, storm, a ship caught on a mountain, and a bird sent out in search of dry land". This is the riveting story of the discovery of the world's first literary epic, the "Epic of Gilgamesh".
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3 out of 5 stars
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interesting- but not for everyone
- By J Michael on 07-16-08
By: David Damrosch
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The Templars
- The History and the Myth: From Solomon's Temple to the Freemasons
- By: Michael Haag
- Narrated by: Guy Bethell
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 244
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 209
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Story4 out of 5 stars 206
Arguably one of the most provocative, puzzling, and misunderstood organizations of medieval times, the legendary Knights Templar have always been shrouded in a veil of mystery, while inspiring popular culture from Indiana Jones to Dan Brown. In The Templars, author Michael Haag offers a definitive history of these loyal Christian soldiers of the Crusades - sworn to defend the Holy Land and Jerusalem, but ultimately damned and destroyed by the Pope and his church.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Narrator ruined it
- By Amazon Customer on 10-19-17
By: Michael Haag
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The Rise and Fall of Alexandria
- Birthplace of the Modern Mind
- By: Justin Pollard, Howard Reid
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 11 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,016
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 684
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 682
Founded by Alexander the Great and built by self-styled Greek pharaohs, the city of Alexandria at its height dwarfed both Athens and Rome. It was the marvel of its age, legendary for its vast palaces, safe harbors, and magnificent lighthouse. But it was most famous for the astonishing intellectual efflorescence it fostered and the library it produced. If the European Renaissance was the "rebirth" of Western culture, then Alexandria, Egypt, was its birthplace.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A good listen
- By Jeffrey on 10-02-08
By: Justin Pollard, and others
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Venice
- Pure City
- By: Peter Ackroyd
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 14 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 92
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 73
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Story4 out of 5 stars 70
The Venetians' language and way of thinking set them aside from the rest of Italy. They are an island people, linked to the sea and to the tides rather than the land. This latest work from the incomparable Peter Ackroyd, like a magic gondola, transports its listeners to that sensual and surprising city. His account embraces facts and romance, conjuring up the atmosphere of the canals, bridges, and sunlit squares, the churches and the markets, the festivals and the flowers.
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2 out of 5 stars
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An endless droning list.....
- By jack on 03-15-11
By: Peter Ackroyd
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Taj Mahal
- Passion and Genius at the Heart of the Moghul Empire
- By: Diana Preston, Michael Preston
- Narrated by: James Adams
- Length: 10 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 151
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 118
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 117
While Galileo was suffering under house arrest at the hands of Pope Urban VIII, the 30 Years War was ruining Europe, and the Pilgrims were struggling to survive in the New World, work began on what would become one of the Seven Wonders of the World: the Taj Mahal. Built by the Moghul emperor Shah Jahan as a memorial to his beloved wife, Mumtaz Mahal, its flawless symmetry and gleaming presence have for centuries dazzled all who have seen it.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A broad perspective
- By Neil on 11-01-09
By: Diana Preston, and others
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Danubia
- A Personal History of Habsburg Europe
- By: Simon Winder
- Narrated by: James Cameron Stewart
- Length: 22 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 176
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 157
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 155
From the end of the Middle Ages to the First World War, Europe was dominated by one family: the Habsburgs. Their unprecedented rule is the focus of Simon Winder's vivid third book, Danubia. This is a narrative that, while erudite and well researched, prefers to be discursive and anecdotal. In his survey of the centuries of often incompetent Habsburg rule which have continued to shape the fate of Central Europe, Winder does not shy away from the horrors, railing against the effects of nationalism, recounting the violence that was often part of life.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Magnificent history of the Habsburg Empire
- By Skeptical on 10-25-18
By: Simon Winder
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Basilica
- The Splendor and the Scandal: Building St. Peter's
- By: R.A. Scotti
- Narrated by: Josephine Bailey
- Length: 8 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 215
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 102
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 104
It was the splendor and the scandal of the age. In 1506, the ferociously ambitious Renaissance Pope Julius II tore down the most sacred shrine in Europe, the millennium-old St. Peter's Basilica built by the Emperor Constantine over the apostle's grave, to build a better basilica.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Spell binding
- By Margaret on 10-17-07
By: R.A. Scotti
What listeners say about Fallen Glory
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Carter Shackelford
- 09-14-19
A triumph for history and architecture buffs
A great piece of journalistic story telling, historical reporting, and insight into some of the greatest structures that man has ever created, and the human fallibility that led to their eventual demise.
John Lee was a perfect choice for narration, and he absolutely nails it.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Mary
- 03-19-19
A sprint through history
The author pulls together the historical reasons for building and later abandoning or destroying a building. He doesn't discuss the architectural significance of the building, so much as its place in history.
That said, I'll listen to John Lee read pretty much anything.
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2 people found this helpful