Vorab-RezensentenPaul Strathern

A dazzling new history of the world told through the ten major empires of human civilization. Eminent historian Paul Strathern opens the story of Empire with the Akkadian civilization, which ruled over a vast expanse of the region of ancient Mesopotamia, then turns to the immense Roman Empire, where we trace back our Western and Eastern roots. Next the narrative describes how a great deal of Western Classical culture was developed in the Abbasid and Umayyid Caliphates. Then, while Europe was beginning to emerge from a period of cultural stagnation, it almost fell to a whirlwind invasion from the East, at which point we meet the Emperors of the Mongol Empire . . . Combining breathtaking scope with masterful narrative control, Paul Strathern traces these connections across four millennia and sheds new light on these major civilizations—from the Mongol Empire and the Yuan Dynasty to the Aztec and Ottoman, through to the most recent and biggest empires: the British, Russo-Soviet, and American. Charting five thousand years of global history in ten lucid chapters, Empire is a must-listen for anyone fascinated by the history of the world.

Following Leonardo Da Vinci, Niccolo Machiavelli and Cesare Borgia through the mountains, remote villages and hill towns of the Italian Romagna, this is a vivid and gripping account of a fateful collusion of extreme significance and considerable danger. They were three men who could not have been more different. Da Vinci is even today considered the epitome of the Renaissance man, possessing the most inquisitive mind of his generation and inspired talent. Machiavelli was a power-broker, an influencer, a man of subtle talents and radical ideas that would redefine leadership through his work, The Prince. The name of Borgia reso- nates through the ages with alarums of dark deeds and deadly ambition. Yet Da Vinci worked with and for Borgia; Machiavelli and Da Vinci debated philosophy; Borgia was a patron to many artists whose brutal despotism was all the more notable for the brilliance with which he applied inhuman patience and the element of surprise. Through these intersecting lives, the glory and gut-wrenching adventure of the Italian Renaissance unfolds--in all its artistic beauty, political complexity, and martial brutality.