-
The History of the Medieval World
- From the Conversion of Constantine to the First Crusade
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 22 hrs and 42 mins
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Publisher's summary
From the schism between Rome and Constantinople to the rise of the T'ang Dynasty, from the birth of Muhammad to the crowning of Charlemagne, this erudite book tells the fascinating, often violent story of kings, generals, and the peoples they ruled. In her earlier work, The History of the Ancient World, Susan Wise Bauer wrote of the rise of kingship based on might. But in the years between the fourth and the 12th centuries, rulers had to find new justification for their power, and they turned to divine truth or grace to justify political and military action. Right thus replaces might as the engine of empire. Not just Christianity and Islam but the religions of the Persians and the Germans, and even Buddhism, are pressed into the service of the state. This phenomenon---stretching from the Americas all the way to Japan---changes religion, but it also changes the state.
Critic reviews
Featured Article: Travel to the Middle Ages with These Audiobooks and Podcasts
The Medieval Era, the tumultuous centuries from the fall of the Roman Empire to the advent of the Enlightenment, is one of the most alluring and intriguing periods of human history. Ready to travel back in time? Check out these audiobooks and podcasts, which cover everything from Icelandic sagas and Medieval murder to the queens of Medieval England and the scientific advancements of the Arab World.
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- By Ken on 08-11-17
By: Charles Oman
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By the Spear
- Philip II, Alexander the Great, and the Rise and Fall of the Macedonian Empire
- By: Ian Worthington
- Narrated by: Phil Holland
- Length: 11 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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For the first time, By the Spear offers an exhilarating military narrative of the reigns of these two larger-than-life figures in one volume. Ian Worthington gives full breadth to the careers of father and son, showing how Philip was the architect of the Macedonian empire, which reached its zenith under Alexander, only to disintegrate upon his death.
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Bueller..... Bueller...... Bueller...... Monotone
- By Jonathan Allen Beard on 02-15-15
By: Ian Worthington
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The Templars
- The Rise and Spectacular Fall of God's Holy Warriors
- By: Dan Jones
- Narrated by: Dan Jones
- Length: 15 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1307, as they struggled to secure their last strongholds in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the Templars fell afoul of the vindictive and impulsive king of France. On Friday, October 13, hundreds of brothers were arrested en masse, imprisoned, tortured, and disbanded amid accusations of lurid sexual misconduct and heresy. They were tried by the Vatican in secret proceedings. But were they heretics or victims of a ruthlessly repressive state?
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Unexpected
- By Protogere on 10-30-17
By: Dan Jones
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In God's Path
- The Arab Conquests and the Creation of an Islamic Empire
- By: Robert G. Hoyland
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim
- Length: 9 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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In just over a hundred years - from the death of Muhammad in 632 to the beginning of the Abbasid Caliphate in 750 - the followers of the Prophet swept across the whole of the Middle East, North Africa, and Spain. Their armies threatened states as far flung as the Franks in Western Europe and the Tang Empire in China. The conquered territory was larger than the Roman Empire at its greatest expansion, and it was claimed for the Arabs in roughly half the time.
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Islamic conquest history from the outside
- By SAMA on 01-22-15
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God's Wolf
- The Life of the Most Notorious of All Crusaders, Scourge of Saladin
- By: Jeffrey Lee
- Narrated by: Nigel Patterson
- Length: 8 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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In a 2010 terrorist plot, Al-Qaeda hid a bomb in a FedEx shipment addressed to Reynald de Chatillon, a knight who had died centuries ago in the Crusades. A reviled figure in Islamic history, often portrayed as the very epitome of brutality, Reynald remains as controversial - and as vividly present in the minds of many in the Middle East - as the story of the Crusades themselves.
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A great look into the life of a great crusader
- By Jon on 02-28-19
By: Jeffrey Lee
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God's Battalions
- The Case for the Crusades
- By: Rodney Stark
- Narrated by: David Drummond
- Length: 7 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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In God's Battalions, award-winning author Rodney Stark takes on the long-held view that the Crusades were the first round of European colonialism, conducted for land, loot, and converts by barbarian Christians who victimized the cultivated Muslims. To the contrary, Stark argues that the Crusades were the first military response to unwarranted Muslim terrorist aggression.
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A lively and useful introduction
- By Tad Davis on 01-06-10
By: Rodney Stark
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Ancient Rome
- The Rise and Fall of An Empire
- By: Simon Baker
- Narrated by: Chris MacDonnell
- Length: 17 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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This is the story of the greatest empire the world has ever known. Simon Baker charts the rise and fall of the world's first superpower, focusing on six momentous turning points that shaped Roman history. Welcome to Rome as you've never seen it before - awesome and splendid, gritty and squalid. From the conquest of the Mediterranean beginning in the third century BC to the destruction of the Roman Empire at the hands of barbarian invaders some seven centuries later, we discover the most critical episodes in Roman history.
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Clear and dramatic
- By Tad Davis on 08-01-17
By: Simon Baker
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Isabella
- The Warrior Queen
- By: Kirstin Downey
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr
- Length: 21 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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An engrossing and revolutionary biography of Isabella of Castile, the controversial Queen of Spain who sponsored Christopher Columbus's journey to the New World, established the Spanish Inquisition, and became one of the most influential female rulers in history.
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Poorly narrated
- By Amazon Customer on 02-23-15
By: Kirstin Downey
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Jerusalem
- The Biography
- By: Simon Sebag Montefiore
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 25 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Jerusalem is the universal city, the capital of two peoples, the shrine of three faiths; it is the prize of empires, the site of Judgement Day and the battlefield of today’s clash of civilizations. From King David to Barack Obama, from the birth of Judaism, Christianity and Islam to the Israel-Palestine conflict, this is the epic history of three thousand years of faith, slaughter, fanaticism and coexistence. This is how Jerusalem became Jerusalem, and the only city that exists twice - in heaven and on earth.
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In-depth and gripping history of 3,000 years
- By A reader on 12-16-11
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Sicily
- An Island at the Crossroads of History
- By: John Julius Norwich
- Narrated by: Michael Healy
- Length: 14 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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"Sicily," said Goethe, "is the key to everything." It is the largest island in the Mediterranean, the stepping-stone between Europe and Africa, the link between the Latin West and the Greek East. Sicily's strategic location has tempted Roman emperors, French princes, and Spanish kings. The subsequent struggles to conquer and keep it have played crucial roles in the rise and fall of the world's most powerful dynasties.
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DISAPPOINTING
- By SRdto on 11-22-16
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Narration
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What listeners say about The History of the Medieval World
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Troy
- 08-11-14
The First Half of the Medieval World
The sequel to this book is The History of the Renaissance World, which picks up where this one leaves off and stops right before the actual Renaissance. To my mind then, this book is only the first half of the Medieval world story. That irks me, seeing as how the Renaissance story is not actually told in this series. And that's too bad because like the previous volume dealing with the Ancient World, this volume is pretty freaking spectacular in terms of scope and depth. It says something when the worst I can say about a series is that I want more.
As with the Ancient World volume, this book covers every corner of the globe: every continent (except Antarctica), both hemispheres. Every major culture from the Mayans to the Chinese and everything in between are put on the timeline for comparison and contrast in the course of civilization's rise and fall. It's the kind of eye-opening overview presented in a way that really should be taught in schools, where focus is not on any one given civilization, but rather on parallel development between cultures. As different as the cultures are, the underlying patterns of humanity are revealed, showing that, regardless of where on the map we spring up, we're all capable of some amazing and equally devastating things.
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101 people found this helpful
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- Carl
- 01-15-12
A great place to continue--a tough place to start.
What did you love best about The History of the Medieval World?
The book does an excellent job of connecting world events together, instead of focusing on one specific land/nation/continent. That said, that is a monumental task and a listener can easily get overwhelmed by such a perspective--especially when
What did you like best about this story?
As an American of Western European stock, I found it useful to hear about the developments on the Korean Peninsula--as that drama continues to play out today.
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
No--one chapter at a time. The listener needs time to absorb the content of this book
Any additional comments?
This is one of the few audio books I have downloaded where I fully intend to listen to it--not one more time--but two more times. The topic is that heavy.
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55 people found this helpful
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- Mr Mock
- 12-11-10
An Excellent Overview
This book is an excellent overview of the transition from the old Roman and Persian world of late Antiquity into the the Feudal/Crusader period. It also provides the reader with much information on the Orient/Indian/North American civilizations and their highs and lows. It is really quit fascinating how much the history of nearly all peoples is linked. For every action there is a consequence, a ripple effect that may not affect the peoples performing said actions, but can cause mass chaos half a world away.
While this book by no means goes into any great depth on a particular people, it provides the reader with a great stepping stone for further investigations into history. As a Christian, I particularly enjoyed the look into the founding of Islam and the conquests following the death of Muhammad, a subject slightly difficult to find in audio format.
John Lee is a fine narrator, one of my favorite voices, and he really brings this book to life. He certainly is not monotone in his reading, as one reviewer suggests. I find that his pronunciations are spot on; he clearly has much knowledge of history himself.
So if you are interested in Medieval history but do not know where to start, this book will provide you with an excellent overview of the subject and act as a stepping stone into further reading.
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49 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Chi-Hung
- 06-15-10
Balanced
This book has a very balanced treatment to middle age by presenting political history of Western Europe, Americas, India, China, Japan, Byzantine, Islam and Turks, and because the focus is on political history, it's infinitely readable and interesting. We however get no social history, no great thinkers, no technology, no class analysis only time they were mentioned was if they have tangent with political narrative.
Also the decision to end the book at First Crusade, (1096-1099) seem entirely arbitrary.
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47 people found this helpful
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- Alison
- 08-04-11
My Kind of History Book
Bauer's book is a narrative of medieval history. It covers facts without a lot of fluff. I like how it travels the globe to give you an idea of what is going on all over during a time period. I learned a lot about Indian and Korean history which I'd never encountered and was able to line up events on different continents and see the relationships. Well worth the credit.
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35 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Todd
- 05-13-11
A tough one to get through
I tried. I really tried with this one. I think the idea of the author is a good one, but without enough personalized accounts or a contiguous narrative, this book just becomes the thing that everyone who hates history dreads: a long list of events, dates, names and places that have no coherent connection.
One strategy to get through this book is to just listen to the different segments based on the civilizations followed. For instance, just listen to the segments about Rome and the West, then go back and listen to the segments about China and Korea and then finish up with the segments about India. It does make it easier but still, since there's very little meat presented to hang on the historical bones of events, the book is still not much fun to follow.
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- John A. Csellak
- 01-23-13
Worth a Listen for the Details and Narrator
Any additional comments?
This book is a detailed account if medieval history throughout the world. A valid criticism is that it does tend to be a list of people, events, and dates, exactly what some people don't like history to be. In spite of that, I found it to be incredibly interesting and useful, giving a fantastic review of all the important (and some not-so-important) things that happened in this period.I especially like the way it includes what was happening in China, Japan, India, and the Near East during this period, interweaving this with the events of Medieval Europe that most books limit themselves to.If nothing else, it's worth listening to if only to hear the narrator seamlessly switch from jaw-dropping pronunciations of Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Scandinavian, Persian, Arab, Frankish, Germanic, Spanish, Greek, Anglo-Saxon, Italian, and other place names and person names. I don't know if he's pronouncing the all correctly, but it sure sounds like he is.
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13 people found this helpful
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- Gary
- 05-29-17
A lot of facts, a lot of names, places dates
There is a whole lot of 'one darn thing after another' in the telling of this story. Even the author herself would probably not be able to answer all the questions from a multiple choice test based on this book. At times, it did get overwhelming with all the names and places and dates which are presented in this story.
The narrative for weaving the story together coherently at times seemed to be missing. The particular sometimes needs a glue in order for the bigger, universal story to be understood. It's possible to look at and study every turtle in the known universe, but still not understand what turtle being really means.
I felt the book excelled at early Christian church history and what the nature of the trinity meant, the different ways of understanding the divinity of Christ, and the development of the orthodox Western Church and the Eastern Church. All early Christian 'isms' such as Nestorianism, Manicheism, Arianism, and so on usually confuse me, but she would repeat the definition as they came up in the story telling thus allowing me to follow the esoteric fine points. The author also would emphasis the importance of identity in order for a group of people to become greater than the sum of its parts thus allowing for a cohesive system of some kind transcending what was previously there beforehand.
I thought a slightly better book on this topic was Will Durant's Volume IV of "The Story of Civilization: The Age of Faith". He has a narrative that tied the story together, and he also looked at the development of thought in addition to the political events that were covered in this book, and he presented most of the same facts (at least in Europe), but I never felt overwhelmed by his story telling as I sometimes would with this book because he knows that history needs a narrative in order to be understood.
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10 people found this helpful
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- Kim
- 11-15-10
Wide-ranging
The book starts rather abruptly, but that wasn't a huge obstacle to becoming absorbed in it. Of necessity, it gives only summaries of large periods of time, but it discusses pretty much the whole world. There is quite a lot of discussion of Asian history at this period, including what are now Japan, the Koreas, China and India, so it's not just a book about Europe.
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10 people found this helpful
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- Lana Lee Plum
- 09-06-16
Religion and Rulers generate war and murder.
The history of the world from the beginning of known human history during Medieval Times. It covers the whole known world including Africa, India, China, Japan, Korea, Russia, British Islands, Scotland, Ireland, Scandinavian Countries, European Countries, Byzantium Countries, Middle Earth Countries, Greek, Slavic Nations, South American Societies, Mexican Societies, and others.
All the rulers and dates of reign and who took power and how they died. The struggle for power between the religion of the time and the rulers were entwined throughout the time with rulers becoming head of the religion sometimes. The struggle for power generated most often ended in death of people who might inherit the throne or wars to expand the kingdom.
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6 people found this helpful