Medieval Civilization

The strength of the content lies not only in the storybook delivery of it, but also in the way it presents history through the faithful prism of the Church. Have you always wanted your children to learn about world history from a Catholic perspective? Here, you'll have the trusted resource you've always wanted. Whether looking for entertainment on a long road trip, enhancing the experience with the text, or catering to the needs of a child with a reading disability, this audio dramatization will open up a new world of adventure for kids of all ages.

The perfect St. Patrick's Day gift, and a book in the best tradition of popular history -- the untold story of Ireland's role in maintaining Western culture while the Dark Ages settled on Europe. Every year millions of Americans celebrate St. Patrick's Day, but they may not be aware of how great...

The perfect St. Patrick's Day gift, and a book in the best tradition of popular history -- the untold story of Ireland's role in maintaining Western culture while the Dark Ages settled on Europe. Every year millions of Americans celebrate St. Patrick's Day, but they may not be aware of how great...

The fourth volume in Will Durant's Pulitzer Prize-winning series, The Age of Faith surveys the medieval achievements and modern significance of Christian, Islamic, and Judaic life and culture. Like the other volumes in the Story of Civilization series, this is a self-contained work, which at the same time fits into a comprehensive history of mankind. It includes the dramatic stories of St. Augustine, Hypatia, Justinian, Mohammed, Harun al-Rashid, Charlemagne, William the Conqueror, and many more.

Before Europe claimed to discover the world, al-Biruni had already measured it. Long before the European Age of Discovery, long before Mercator’s maps, colonial Indology, modern anthropology, or the scientific study of comparative religion, a Persianate Muslim scholar from Central Asia was asking questions centuries ahead of his time. How large is the Earth? How can a civilization understand another without reducing it to rumor? How do calendars reveal the soul of a people? How can religion be compared without mockery? How can stones, metals, and minerals be studied through measurement ...

Who were the Moors—and why does their story still matter today? For centuries, the Moors have been misunderstood, misrepresented, and often erased from mainstream history. Yet they were one of the most powerful and influential civilizations to ever shape Europe, Africa, and the Mediterranean world. From their African roots in North Africa to their rise as rulers of Spain, the Moors built a civilization that transformed cities, preserved knowledge, and ignited intellectual progress that would later fuel the European Renaissance. But their story is more than conquest and empire—it is a ...

The Civilization of the Middle Ages incorporates current research, recent trends in interpretation, and novel perspectives, especially on the foundations of the Middle Ages and the Later Middle Ages of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. A sharper focus on social history, Jewish history, women’s roles in society, and popular religion and heresy distinguish the book.

From “one of America’s smartest and most charming writers” (NPR), an archaeological romp through the entire history of humankind—and through all five senses—from tropical Polynesian islands to forbidding arctic ice floes, and everywhere in between. Whether it’s the mighty pyramids of...

An upstart French duke who sets out to conquer the most powerful and unified kingdom in Christendom. An invasion force on a scale not seen since the days of the Romans. One of the bloodiest and most decisive battles ever fought.

*A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice* From celebrated Yale professor Valerie Hansen, a “vivid” and “astonishingly comprehensive account [that] casts world history in a brilliant new light” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) and shows how bold explorations and daring trade...

Is the world better off without Christianity? Combining narrative with keen critique of contemporary debates, author and historian John Dickson gives an honest account of 2,000 years of Christian history that helps us understand what Christianity is and what it's meant to be. To say that the...

In an age of endless distraction, borrowed identities, and manufactured belief, one question remains: Who governs your field? DEUS VULT is not a religious manifesto. It is a confrontation. Through razor-edged philosophical prose, Etzel Edelweiss dismantles the illusions of modern life—conditioning, passive existence, false awakening, fragmented will—and exposes the hidden machinery that shapes human behavior not through force, but through consent. This is not a book about conspiracy. It is a book about participation. Blending existential philosophy, metaphysical reflection, ...

The World the Plague Made: How the Black Death Forged the Modern West The dying was only the beginning. The real story is what the survivors built from the ashes. Between 1347 and 1353, the Black Death claimed up to 200 million lives. But beyond the staggering mortality lies a more profound truth: the plague was the greatest engine of social change in human history. It didn't just end lives; it ended an era and forced the birth of the modern world. History is written by survivors. This isn't just a book about a disease—it’s about consequences. It traces the long, jagged lines from the ...

The Renaissance did not begin in Florence. Long before Leonardo painted, before Copernicus moved the Earth, before European universities became centers of philosophy and science, another civilization had already gathered the knowledge of the ancient world and set it on fire again. In Baghdad, translators rendered Greek philosophy, medicine, mathematics, and astronomy into Arabic. In Persia and Central Asia, scholars such as al-Khwarizmi, Avicenna, al-Razi, al-Biruni, and al-Tusi transformed inherited knowledge into new systems of calculation, healing, measurement, and cosmic inquiry. In ...

The term Moor is a historical rather than an ethnic name. It is an invention of European Christians for the Islamic inhabitants of Maghreb (North Africa), Andalusia (Spain), Sicily and Malta, and was sometimes use to designate all Muslims. It is derived from Mauri, the Latin name for the Berbers who lived in the Roman province of Mauretania, which ranged across modern Algeria and Morocco. Saracen was another European term used to designate Muslims, though it usually referred to the Arabic peoples of the Middle East and derives from an ancient name for the Arabs, Sarakenoi.

Beginning in prehistoric times, West Africa has always been an incredible region. Early nomadic tribes settled into some of the earliest communities on Earth and learned how to work with metal. Various West African tribes then became adept at working with metal and were some of the most skilled artisans in the world. As civilizations developed in West Africa, nomadic tribes turned into urban societies that built kingdoms. Eventually, some of the greatest leaders in the world created mighty West African empires.

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.

The History of Mental Health Treatment: From Ancient Practices to Modern Science BOOK 1: Ancient and Medieval Mental Health Treatment: How Early Civilizations, Religion, and Philosophy Shaped the First Approaches to Mental Illness explores the long and complex history of how human societies first attempted to understand psychological suffering. Long before psychiatry, therapy, or neuroscience existed, people across ancient and medieval cultures struggled to explain behaviors such as depression, anxiety, hallucinations, and emotional instability. This book traces how those early explanations...

Brought to you by Penguin. Thomas Asbridge’s remarkable new book reveals the global impact of humanity’s greatest natural disaster, and the terrible human cost of this calamity. In the mid-fourteenth century, a lethal plague struck the medieval world, causing unimaginable suffering and...

In the tradition of Why Nations Fail, this book solves one of the great puzzles of history: Why did the West become the most powerful civilization in the world? Western exceptionalism—the idea that European civilizations are freer, wealthier, and less violent—is a widespread and powerful...