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An in-depth, illustrated look at the campaigns, tactics, and weapons of some of history's fiercest and most legendary warriors. Viking warriors were feared by their contemporaries and their ferocious reputation has survived to the present day. This book covers the military history of the Vikings from their early raiding to the final failure of their expansionist ambitions directed against England. In that period, Viking warbands and increasingly...

Offers a comprehensive history of ancient Greece. This title brings alive Greek civilisation from its Stone Age roots to the fourth century B C E. Focusing on the development of the Greek city state and the society, culture, and architecture of Athens in its Golden Age, it integrates political, military, social, and cultural history.

"The millennium between the breakup of the western Roman Empire and the Reformation was a long and hugely transformative period--one not easily chronicled within the scope of a few hundred pages. Yet distinguished historian Chris Wickham has taken up the challenge in this landmark book, and he succeeds in producing the most riveting account of medieval Europe in a generation. Tracking the entire sweep of the Middle Ages across Europe, Wickham focuses...

Today the castle is only too often a romantic ruin; but in the Middle Ages it was an important military and administrative centre, essentially utilitarian in its design and in the purposes it served. Inevitably, the castle played a leading role in mediaeval history. Using the wealth of material available Philip Warner has focused his study on English sieges undertaken in the period from the Norman Conquest to the end of the War of the Roses, a field...

Having coined the phrase "the war that will end war," H. G. Wells was disillusioned by the World War I peace settlement. Convinced that humanity needed to awaken to the instability of the world order and remember lessons from the past, the author of science-fiction classics set out to write about history. Wells hoped to remind mankind of its common past, provide it with a basis for international patriotism, and guide it to renounce war. The work became...

The development of air transport in the early 20th Century led military strategists to examine the concept of inserting light infantry at key points behind enemy lines by air landing and air drop. The Germans were first off-the-mark with assaults in Norway and at Eben Emael in 1940. Crete saw a larger scale attack but while ultimately victorious the cost of men and equipment involved deterred any further Axis operation. The Allies on the other hand...

The Algerian War lasted from 1954 to 1962. It caused the fall of six French governments, led to the collapse of the Fourth Republic, and came close to provoking a civil war on French soil. More than a million Muslim Algerians died in the conflict, and as many European settlers were driven into exile. Above all, the war was marked by an unholy marriage of revolutionary terror and state torture. At the time, this brutal, intractable conflict seemed...

In April 1609, King Philip III of Spain signed an edict denouncing the Muslim inhabitants of Spain as heretics, traitors, and apostates. Later that year, the entire Muslim population of Spain was given three days to leave Spanish territory, on threat of death. In a brutal and traumatic exodus, entire families and communities were obliged to abandon homes and villages where they had lived for generations, leaving their property in the hands of their...

In popular imagination the warfare of the Early Middle Ages is often obscure, unstructured, and unimaginative, lost between two military machines, the 'Romans' and the 'Normans', which saw the country invaded and partitioned. In point of fact, we have a considerable amount of information at our fingertips and the picture that should emerge is one of English ability in the face of sometimes overwhelming pressures on society, and a resilience that eventually...

Great Britain's geopolitical role has undergone many changes over the last four centuries. Once a maritime superpower and ruler of half the world, Britain now occupies an isolated position as an economically fragile island often at odds with her European neighbors. In The Rise and Fall of the British Empire, Lawrence James has written a comprehensive, perceptive, and insightful history of the British Empire. Spanning the years from 1600 to the present...