A Short History of Byzantium » (ABR)

"Norwich is always on the lookout for the small but revealing details. . . . All of this he recounts in a style that consistently entertains."
—The New York Times Book Review

In this magisterial adaptation of his epic three-volume history of Byzantium, John Julius Norwich chronicles the world's longest-lived Christian empire. Beginning with Constantine the Great, who in a.d. 330 made Christianity the religion of his realm and then transferred its capital to the city that would bear his name, Norwich follows the course of eleven centuries of Byzantine statecraft and warfare, politics and theology, manners and art.

In the pages of A Short History of Byzantium we encounter mystics and philosophers, eunuchs and barbarians, and rulers of fantastic erudition, piety, and degeneracy. We enter the life of an empire that could create some of the world's most transcendent religious art and then destroy it in the convulsions of fanaticism. Stylishly written and overflowing with drama, pathos, and wit, here is a matchless account of a lost civilization and its magnificent cultural legacy.

"Strange and fascinating . . . filled with drollery and horror."                          
—Boston Globe

Publishers Weekly

In 1995, the third and concluding volume of Lord Norwich's magnificent chronicle of Byzantium was published to wide acclaim; now the author has condensed his sprawling narrative into a single volume of locomotive power and magisterial concision. Norwich presents deft and wide-ranging scholarship (backed by a lengthy bibliography but no footnotes) through dry but invigorating prose as he guides the reader at breakneck speed through Byzantium's defining moments, from its foundation in A.D. 330 by Constantine the Great through the agonies of its final conquest in 1453 by the Ottoman Turks. The result is a dizzying litany of plots and intrigues, palace revolutions, theological controversies and encounters with myriad hostile neighbors over the course of 11 centuries. Norwich buoys his colorful narrative with trenchant assessments of individual potentates, linking the character of each to the destiny of the empire as a whole. A rich-and ultimately poignant-epic of Christendom's great empire in the East, this history brims with humanity, historical understanding and unrelenting drama.