Ideas & Influences of the Ancient World Bargain Book Box
Ideas & Influences of the Ancient World Bargain Book Box The men and women who built the ancient world — and the fights that tore it apart. Inside: Caesar and Cato locked in the rivalry that killed a republic. Hannibal crossing the Alps with a promise to keep. Justinian rebuilding an empire from Constantinople. The Roman East defended against Persia in a war most people have never heard of. Sun Tzu's Art of War, unchanged after two and a half thousand years and still being handed to generals and executives alike. Then the sharper angles: the imperial women whose reputations were destroyed by the men who wrote the histories. The smoke, noise, and appalling mortality of daily life in ancient Rome. Tutankhamun as a twentieth-century phenomenon rather than a pharaoh. A woman who taught herself Latin in middle age and found it changed everything. Fifteen books for readers who understand that the ancient world isn't finished with us yet. Treasured: How Tutankhamun Shaped a Century — Christina Riggs | ISBN: 9781838950514 | RRP: $49.99 Not a book about ancient Egypt so much as a book about us. Christina Riggs traces what happened after the tomb was opened — the colonial politics, the media frenzy, the commercial exploitation, and the way a boy king who mattered little in his own time came to dominate the modern imagination. Uncommon Wrath: How Caesar and Cato's Deadly Rivalry Destroyed the Roman Republic — Josiah Osgood | ISBN: 9781541620117 | RRP: $49.99 Two men, irreconcilably opposed, whose mutual loathing helped bring down a political system that had lasted four centuries. Josiah Osgood tells the story of the late Republic through the personal enmity at its heart — rigorous scholarship with genuine dramatic force. Justinian: Emperor, Soldier, Saint — Peter Sarris | ISBN: 9781541601338 | RRP: $49.99 A major biography of the emperor who codified Roman law, built the Hagia Sophia, and came within reach of restoring the empire in the West — before plague and war undid nearly all of it. Peter Sarris writes with real command of a complex and consequential reign. The Nisibis War: The Defence of the Roman East, AD 337-363 — John S Harrel | ISBN: 9781526782069 | RRP: $59.99 A detailed military study of the long struggle between Rome and Sassanid Persia for control of the eastern frontier. John S Harrel brings professional military insight to a campaign that shaped the late empire but rarely gets the attention it deserves. Palatine: An Alternative History of the Caesars — Peter Stothard | ISBN: 9781474621014 | RRP: $24.99 A beautifully written and unconventional account of imperial Rome, told through the figures on the margins of power rather than those at its centre. Peter Stothard is a superb prose stylist and this is history as literature. The Last Assassin — Peter Stothard | ISBN: 9781474613156 | RRP: $49.99 The story of the fourteen-year hunt to track down and kill every man who stabbed Julius Caesar — pursued across the Mediterranean world with relentless political calculation. A gripping account of vengeance as an instrument of state. Kings and Kingship in the Hellenistic World 350–30 BC — Dr John D Grainger | ISBN: 9781473863750 | RRP: $80.00 A comprehensive scholarly survey of the successor kingdoms that carved up Alexander's empire and dominated the eastern Mediterranean for three centuries. John D Grainger is an authority on the period and this is a serious work of reference. Populus: Living and Dying in the Wealth, Smoke and Din of Ancient Rome — Guy de la Bédoyère | ISBN: 9781408715154 | RRP: $59.99 What Rome was actually like to live in — the overcrowding, the noise, the fires, the appalling infant mortality, and the extraordinary vitality that persisted through all of it. Guy de la Bédoyère writes about ordinary Roman lives with real vividness and humanity. El Cid: The Life and Afterlife of a Medieval Mercenary — Nora Berend | ISBN: 9781399709637 | RRP: $34.99 A revisionist biography that separates the historical Rodrigo Díaz — a pragmatic soldier who fought for Christian and Muslim rulers alike — from the national hero later constructed around him. Nora Berend is excellent on how myths get made and who benefits from them. Art of War — Sun Tzu | ISBN: 9781398806146 | RRP: $14.99 The foundational text on strategy, deception, and the management of conflict, written in China around the fifth century BC and never out of use since. Read by generals, negotiators, and anyone who has ever needed to think several moves ahead. Living With A Dead Language: My Romance with Latin — Ann Patty | ISBN: 9781101980224 | RRP: $39.99 A memoir about taking up Latin in retirement and discovering that a dead language can reorganise a living mind. Ann Patty writes with wit and real feeling about grammar, ageing, and the unexpected consolations of difficult study. Digging Up Armageddon: The Search for the Lost City of Solomon — Eric H Cline | ISBN: 9780691207834 | RRP: $34.99 A gripping account of one of archaeology's most storied excavations — the dig at Megiddo, the biblical Armageddon — and the larger-than-life characters who pursued it across the twentieth century. Eric H Cline brings real narrative verve to the history of archaeology itself. Hannibal's Oath: The Life and Wars of Rome's Greatest Enemy — John Prevas | ISBN: 9780306824241 | RRP: $49.99 The definitive account of the commander who swore eternal hostility to Rome as a boy and spent his life trying to make good on it. John Prevas has walked Hannibal's routes himself, and the book is the better for it. Oathbreakers: The War of Brothers That Shattered an Empire and Made Medieval Europe — Matthew Gabriele | ISBN: 9780063433755 | RRP: $35.99 How the grandsons of Charlemagne tore his empire apart — and in doing so drew the borders that would define Europe for the next thousand years. Matthew Gabriele makes ninth-century dynastic warfare genuinely gripping and shows why it still matters. Unfortunately, She Was a Nymphomaniac: A New History of Rome's Imperial Women — Joan Smith | ISBN: 9780008638818 | RRP: $34.99 A sharp, corrective account of the women of the Julio-Claudian dynasty and beyond — reassessing the sexual slander that ancient male historians used to discredit powerful women, and asking what the evidence actually supports. Provocative, well-argued, and overdue.