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For most of its 5,000-year existence, China has been the largest, most populous, wealthiest, and mightiest nation on Earth. And for us as Westerners, it is essential to understand where China has been in order to anticipate its future. These 36 eye-opening lectures deliver a comprehensive political and historical overview of one of the most fascinating and complex countries in world history.

Whether complete or only fragmentary, the 930 extant Dead Sea Scrolls irrevocably altered how we look at and understand the foundations of faith and religious practice. Now you can get a comprehensive introduction to this unique series of archaeological documents, and to scholars' evolving understanding of their authorship and significance, with these 24 lectures. Learn what the scrolls are, what they contain, and how the insights they offered into religious and ancient history came into focus.

Funerary rituals show us what people thought about mortality; how they felt about loss; what they believed came next. From Roman cremations and graveside feasts, to deviant burials with heads rearranged, from richly furnished Anglo Saxon graves to the first Christian burial grounds in Wales...

With commanding skill, Thomas R. Martin tells the remarkable and dramatic story of how a tiny, poor, and threatened settlement grew to become, during its height, the dominant power in the Mediterranean world for 500 years. Encompassing the period from Rome's founding in the eighth century BC through Justinian's rule in the sixth century AD, he offers a distinctive perspective on the Romans and their civilization by employing fundamental Roman values as a lens through which to view both their rise and spectacular fall.

Far from being a time of darkness, the Middle Ages was an essential period in the grand narrative of Western history. But what was it like to actually live in those extraordinary times? Now you can find out.These 36 lectures provide a different perspective on the society and culture of the Middle Ages: one that entrenches you in the daily human experience of living during this underappreciated era. Drawing on history, literature, the arts, technology, and science, these lectures will deepen the way you understand not only the Middle Ages but everything that came afterward.

Central Europe is not just a space on a map but also a region of shared experience - of mutual borrowings, impositions and misapprehensions. From the Roman Empire onwards, it has been the target of invasion from the east. In the Middle Ages, Central Europeans cast their eastern foes as 'the dogmen'. They would later become the Turks, Swedes, Russians and Soviets, all of whom pulled the region apart and remade it according to their own vision.

The Sunday Times Bestseller 'A wondrous wonderful achievement' STEPHEN FRY Longlisted for The Anglo-Hellenic League Runciman Award 2025 The Seven Wonders of the World were staggeringly audacious impositions on our planet. They were also brilliant adventures of the mind, test cases for the...

Matthew presents Jesus Christ as the Jesus as the Meshiach Nagid, the Messiah the King, the Lion of the tribe of Judah. It was written by a Jew, to Jews, about a Jew. This book of the Bible uses more Old Testament quotes than any other. The Gospel of Matthew emphasizes the saying of Jesus, including 10 parables not found in any other Gospel. After first establishing the royal genealogy, he then goes on to focus on the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies.

Historians universally agree that Thucydides was the greatest historian who has ever lived, and that his story of the Peloponnesian conflict is a marvel of forensic science and fine literature. That such a triumph of intellectual accomplishment was created at the end of the fifth century B.C. in Greece is, perhaps, not so surprising, given the number of original geniuses we find in that period. But that such an historical work would also be simultaneously acknowledged as a work of great literature and a penetrating ethical evaluation of humanity is one of the miracles of ancient history.

Long sources of mystery, imagination, and inspiration, the myths and history of the ancient Mediterranean have given rise to artistic, religious, cultural, and intellectual traditions that span the centuries. In this unique and comprehensive introduction to the region's three major civilizations, Egypt, Greece, and Rome draws a fascinating picture of the deep links between the cultures across the Mediterranean and explores the ways in which these civilizations continue to be influential to this day.

Do you know that the Olympians weren’t the original immortals? Or that the Goddess Hera restored her virginity each year? The ancient Greeks wove one of the richest and best-preserved collections of stories of all the early civilizations, from the dawn of creation to the bloody siege at Troy.

The scandalous image of the Empress Messalina as a ruthless and sexually insatiable schemer, derived from the work of Roman historians such as Tacitus and Suetonius, has taken deep root in the Western imagination. The stories they told about her included nightly visits to a brothel and a twenty-four-hour sex competition with a prostitute. Tales like these have defined the empress's legacy, but her real story is much more complex. In her new life of Messalina, the classicist Honor Cargill-Martin reappraises one of the most slandered and underestimated female figures of ancient history.

In his retelling of a Chinese history stretching back 5,000 years, author and China-expert Jonathan Clements focuses on the human stories which led to the powerful transformations in Chinese society - from the unification of China under its first emperor, Qinshi Huangdi, to the Mongol invasion under Genghis Khan and the consolidation of Communist rule under Mao Zedong. Clements even brings listeners through to the present day, outlining China's economic renaissance under Deng Xiaoping and Xi Jinping.

The ruins of Pompeii, buried by an explosion of Vesuvius in 79 CE, offer the best evidence we have of everyday life in the Roman empire. This remarkable book rises to the challenge of making sense of those remains, as well as exploding many myths: the very date of the eruption, probably a few months later than usually thought, or the hygiene of the baths that must have been hotbeds of germs, or the legendary number of brothels, most likely only one, or the massive death count, maybe less than 10 per cent of the population.

Bestselling historian and broadcaster Tom Holland gives a thrilling panoramic account of the birth of the new Western Europe in the year 1000 'An exhilarating sweep across European history either side of the year 1000; riveting' ALLAN MASSIE, SPECTATOR 'I relished the blood and thunder narrative...

From the Sunday Times bestseller comes a gripping retelling of Hannibal's greatest trial - the battle of Cannae. Narrated by Phil Stevens, this audio-first novel features music, on-location sound effects and detailed sound design. Cannae, 216 BC - Under a blisteringly hot sun, Hannibal Barca...

Walk a day in a Roman's sandals. What was it like to live in one of the ancient world's most powerful and bustling cities - one that was eight times more densely populated than modern-day New York? In this entertaining and enlightening guide, best-selling historian Philip Matyszak introduces us to the people who lived and worked there. In each hour of the day, we meet a new character - from emperor to slave girl, gladiator to astrologer, medicine woman to water-clock maker - and discover the fascinating details of their daily lives.

Mankind has a distinct advantage over other terrestrial species: we talk to one another. But how did we acquire the most advanced form of communication on Earth? Daniel L. Everett, a "bombshell" linguist and "instant folk hero" (Tom Wolfe, Harper's), provides in this sweeping history a comprehensive examination of the evolutionary story of language, from the earliest speaking attempts by hominids to the more than 7,000 languages that exist today.

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'Life-filled and life-affirming history, steeped in romance and written with verve' GUARDIAN 'Richly entertaining and impeccably researched' Peter Frankopan Istanbul has always been a place where stories and histories collide and crackle, where the idea is as potent...

'One of our greatest scholars of the ancient world . . . a remarkable feat of urban resurrection' WILLIAM DALRYMPLE 'Compelling and authoritative . . . an exhilarating portrait of one of the world's greatest cities' SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE 'A masterpiece' TRISTAN HUGHES ______________ Babylon...