100 books like A Short History of Byzantium

By John Julius Norwich,

Here are 100 books that A Short History of Byzantium fans have personally recommended if you like A Short History of Byzantium. Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of The Viking Way: Magic and Mind in Late Iron Age Scandinavia

Lilith Saintcrow Author Of A Flame in the North

From my list on European history books for writing Western epic fantasy.

Why am I passionate about this?

Like any writer, I’m fascinated with what makes people tick and why they act the way they do. Naturally, this means I read a lot of history. I love reference reading; I love researching arcane questions for a tiny detail that will bring a character or their world to life. Creating epic fantasy is an extension of both my drives as a reader and a writer. Pouring myself into characters who inhabit different settings is a deeply satisfying exercise in both craft and empathy, and each history book has some small bit I can use to make my settings more compelling, more enjoyable for readers, and more real.

Lilith's book list on European history books for writing Western epic fantasy

Lilith Saintcrow Why did Lilith love this book?

This is a pretty dense scholarly work, but that very density makes it a cornucopia for anyone interested in how a specific historical culture regarded magic.

I appreciated that while academic, Price is never boring or needlessly obscure; he does a very good job of not only explaining the historical record but also the best guess at how it can be interpreted.

Not only did it teach me a great deal about the Vikings, but it also taught me other strategies and ways of thinking about other cultures’ magical practices, and for a fantasy writer, that’s pure gold.

By Neil Price,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked The Viking Way as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Magic, sorcery and witchcraft are among the most common themes of the great medieval Icelandic sagas and poems, the problematic yet vital sources that provide our primary textual evidence for the Viking Age that they claim to describe. Yet despite the consistency of this picture, surprisingly little archaeological or historical research has been done to explore what this may really have meant to the men and women of the time. This book examines the evidence for Old Norse sorcery, looking at its meaning and function, practice and practitioners, and the complicated constructions of gender and sexual identity with which these…


Book cover of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Lilith Saintcrow Author Of A Flame in the North

From my list on European history books for writing Western epic fantasy.

Why am I passionate about this?

Like any writer, I’m fascinated with what makes people tick and why they act the way they do. Naturally, this means I read a lot of history. I love reference reading; I love researching arcane questions for a tiny detail that will bring a character or their world to life. Creating epic fantasy is an extension of both my drives as a reader and a writer. Pouring myself into characters who inhabit different settings is a deeply satisfying exercise in both craft and empathy, and each history book has some small bit I can use to make my settings more compelling, more enjoyable for readers, and more real.

Lilith's book list on European history books for writing Western epic fantasy

Lilith Saintcrow Why did Lilith love this book?

I was in love the moment I opened an abridged version of Gibbon’s magnum opus as a young history buff, and was even more delighted when I sought out the multivolume full experience.

Gibbon’s view of the Roman Empire is magisterial and his footnotes are a cranky delight; he’s up-front when his sources have axes to grind and sourly suspicious of his own motivations.

Sure, he’s an 18th-century British colonialist with all that entails. He’s also deliciously ironic, hilariously sardonic, and does his mightiest justice when he’s skewering folly and tyranny of any stripe.

By Edward Gibbon,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Spanning thirteen centuries from the age of Trajan to the taking of Constantinople by the Turks, DECLINE & FALL is one of the greatest narratives in European Literature. David Womersley's masterly selection and bridging commentary enables the readerto acquire a general sense of the progress and argument of the whole work and displays the full variety of Gibbon's achievement.


Book cover of Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times

Lilith Saintcrow Author Of A Flame in the North

From my list on European history books for writing Western epic fantasy.

Why am I passionate about this?

Like any writer, I’m fascinated with what makes people tick and why they act the way they do. Naturally, this means I read a lot of history. I love reference reading; I love researching arcane questions for a tiny detail that will bring a character or their world to life. Creating epic fantasy is an extension of both my drives as a reader and a writer. Pouring myself into characters who inhabit different settings is a deeply satisfying exercise in both craft and empathy, and each history book has some small bit I can use to make my settings more compelling, more enjoyable for readers, and more real.

Lilith's book list on European history books for writing Western epic fantasy

Lilith Saintcrow Why did Lilith love this book?

Too often, our idea of history (or prehistory) is of men doing things and women silently following. Barber dives into the history of textiles to show how spinning, weaving, and cloth were not only drivers of culture and civilization but also a major technological achievement akin to harnessing fire and developing agriculture.

I was blown away both by the book’s premise and by the obvious passion and breadth of knowledge Barber brought to showing just how the stunning leap forward taken by women with spindles kick-started what we think of as civilization.

We take clothes for granted, but the first person to think of cloth rather than animal skins gave a great gift to humanity, one which may never be equaled.

By Elizabeth Wayland Barber,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Women's Work as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

New discoveries about the textile arts reveal women's unexpectedly influential role in ancient societies.

Twenty thousand years ago, women were making and wearing the first clothing created from spun fibers. In fact, right up to the Industrial Revolution the fiber arts were an enormous economic force, belonging primarily to women.

Despite the great toil required in making cloth and clothing, most books on ancient history and economics have no information on them. Much of this gap results from the extreme perishability of what women produced, but it seems clear that until now descriptions of prehistoric and early historic cultures have…


Book cover of Cloud Cuckoo Land

Don Sawyer Author Of The Burning Gem

From my list on books that are fantasy sci-fi and make you think.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve worked in many places worldwide, including Native (Amerindian) communities, West Africa, and Jamaica. Each of these experiences has enriched my life and exposed me to the fact that our society is only one of many and, similarly, that all do not share our understanding of reality. Whether visiting Adongo, a Ghanaian shaman who lived on the Burkina Faso border, and watching him go into a trance and describe my spirit, or being in the sweltering dark of a sweat lodge transported by the chanting to another place, to merging with an ancient oak tree, I have been touched by magic. It’s out there. 

Don's book list on books that are fantasy sci-fi and make you think

Don Sawyer Why did Don love this book?

Over the years, I’ve read hundreds, maybe thousands of books. Many of them have moved, stretched, and entertained me, but there are only a few I wandered into and realized early on that I would not get out of this one unchanged.

The author's inventiveness is astonishing, managing to create not one new world we inhabit but three, all deftly interconnected by the unlikely thread of a simple fable passed from generation to generation. Perhaps most striking to me is the sheer power of the book, its capacity to take us places and share lives we would otherwise never dreamed of.

While the mysterious document—itself a fascinating story within a story—wends its way through a narrative that spans a thousand years, its message is less important than the lives it touches.

And what lives. Each character is drawn so vividly and infused with such essential, defining human traits that we…

By Anthony Doerr,

Why should I read it?

13 authors picked Cloud Cuckoo Land as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

On the New York Times bestseller list for over 20 weeks * A New York Times Notable Book * A National Book Award Finalist * Named a Best Book of the Year by Fresh Air, Time, Entertainment Weekly, Associated Press, and many more

“If you’re looking for a superb novel, look no further.” —The Washington Post

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of All the Light We Cannot See, comes the instant New York Times bestseller that is a “wildly inventive, a humane and uplifting book for adults that’s infused with the magic of childhood reading experiences” (The New York Times…


Book cover of Birds Without Wings

Chris Humphreys Author Of Plague

From my list on historical lives disrupted by extraordinary events.

Why am I passionate about this?

I fell in love with historical fiction when I was a child. Adventurous tales—especially if they had swordplay in them! And I was fascinated by young people having to choose whether to stand up for what they believed in or run away. Ordinary folk are forced by circumstances—and villains—to do the extraordinary. I empathized and felt like I could be one of them. So when I came to write, I wanted to tell those kinds of stories. I eventually realized what I wrote was 'the intimate epic'—showing how the minor historical players can have a major effect.

Chris' book list on historical lives disrupted by extraordinary events

Chris Humphreys Why did Chris love this book?

I often admire writers, and it is very rare for me to be outright jealous of one. But I was with this astonishing book. It was intimately epic in the complete sense. We focus on a wonderful cast of characters who lived in a small village in southern Turkey in the early 20th century for many years.

You fall in love with them, and they make you laugh out loud. Then, you are heartbroken as their world is destroyed by ceaseless war. Brutal, romantic, hilarious, and completely tragic, this novel pulls you apart. I felt I knew them all well and was bereft when I finished the book. I missed these flawed, funny, sad people. I still do!

By Louis De Bernieres,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked Birds Without Wings as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Set against the backdrop of the collapsing Ottoman Empire, Birds Without Wings traces the fortunes of one small community in south-west Anatolia - a town in which Christian and Muslim lives and traditions have co-existed peacefully for centuries.

When war is declared and the outside world intrudes, the twin scourges of religion and nationalism lead to forced marches and massacres, and the peaceful fabric of life is destroyed. Birds Without Wings is a novel about the personal and political costs of war, and about love: between men and women; between friends; between those who are driven to be enemies; and…


Book cover of From the Holy Mountain: A Journey Among the Christians of the Middle East

T.C. Kuhn Author Of The Byzantine Cipher

From my list on the longest empire in western history.

Why am I passionate about this?

After my third visit to this part of the world, I decided to revisit the locales that had become engrained in my memories in the company of a character I had tentatively invented some years back who was in search of a time and place to emerge it seemed. As a retired archaeologist and amateur historian of early time periods I became fascinated with Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire, which lasted for a thousand years and has received so little attention in average history books and even college and public school teaching. Constantinople sat at the center of a unique and important world and deserves far more attention than we have often given it.

T.C.'s book list on the longest empire in western history

T.C. Kuhn Why did T.C. love this book?

Are you a fan of travel literature? If so, then you will be as amazed as I was to find this remarkable account. In the 1990s, the author, a noted travel writer, undertook a task that would be impossible to duplicate today for obvious reasons. Based upon the contents of a rare manuscript, he decided to trace the footsteps of two eastern orthodox monks who, in the Sixth Century, traveled through much of the Byzantine World, moving from one ancient monastery to another while describing their adventures. Tracing their route, the author relates in a witty, yet always respectful and well-written narrative the many obstacles he and his predecessors 1,300 years earlier faced. “The more things (and people) change the more they stay the same,” if for different reasons, and nothing can point that euphemism out better than this entertaining and informative book of a lost world and a time…

By William Dalrymple,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked From the Holy Mountain as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In the spring of A.D. 587, John Moschos and his pupil Sophronius the Sophist embarked on a remarkable expedition across the entire Byzantine world, traveling from the shores of Bosphorus to the sand dunes of Egypt. Using Moschos’s writings as his guide and inspiration, the acclaimed travel writer William Dalrymple retraces the footsteps of these two monks, providing along the way a moving elegy to the slowly dying civilization of Eastern Christianity and to the people who are struggling to keep its flame alive. The result is Dalrymple’s unsurpassed masterpiece: a beautifully written travelogue, at once rich and scholarly, moving…


Book cover of The Byzantine World War

T.C. Kuhn Author Of The Byzantine Cipher

From my list on the longest empire in western history.

Why am I passionate about this?

After my third visit to this part of the world, I decided to revisit the locales that had become engrained in my memories in the company of a character I had tentatively invented some years back who was in search of a time and place to emerge it seemed. As a retired archaeologist and amateur historian of early time periods I became fascinated with Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire, which lasted for a thousand years and has received so little attention in average history books and even college and public school teaching. Constantinople sat at the center of a unique and important world and deserves far more attention than we have often given it.

T.C.'s book list on the longest empire in western history

T.C. Kuhn Why did T.C. love this book?

Will we ever be free of the Crusades and how it shaped our modern world? Not according to the author, who brings this idea to the forefront with a new perspective on the role that the Byzantine Empire and the fall of Constantinople in the 11th Century at the hands of western Christian crusaders wrought at the time. Personally, since this story unfolds less than a century after when my own focus on Byzantine history has been the past two years, I was fascinated by Holmes’ thoughtful interpretation of how the fading empire sitting at the center of three diverse cultural centers and their burgeoning religions, all dedicated to overt expansionism, has so often been neglected or overlooked entirely by later historians, even into the present. The Crusades were truly a “World War” at the time, and the author’s ability to connect so many diverse and related pieces of…

By Nick Holmes,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Byzantine World War as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Crusades shook the world. But why did they happen?
Their origins are revealed in a new light. As part of a medieval world war that stretched from Asia to Europe. At its centre was an ancient empire - Byzantium.
Told for the first time as a single, linked narrative are three great events that changed history: the fall of Byzantium in the eleventh century, the epic campaign of the First Crusade and the origins of modern Turkey.
Nick Holmes not only presents the First Crusade in a wider global context but he also puts forwards new interpretations of the…


Book cover of Dirty Old London: The Victorian Fight Against Filth

Lilith Saintcrow Author Of A Flame in the North

From my list on European history books for writing Western epic fantasy.

Why am I passionate about this?

Like any writer, I’m fascinated with what makes people tick and why they act the way they do. Naturally, this means I read a lot of history. I love reference reading; I love researching arcane questions for a tiny detail that will bring a character or their world to life. Creating epic fantasy is an extension of both my drives as a reader and a writer. Pouring myself into characters who inhabit different settings is a deeply satisfying exercise in both craft and empathy, and each history book has some small bit I can use to make my settings more compelling, more enjoyable for readers, and more real.

Lilith's book list on European history books for writing Western epic fantasy

Lilith Saintcrow Why did Lilith love this book?

I hadn’t thought seriously about the problem of rubbish, sewage, and waste disposal before reading Jackson’s work.

I think it’s important, even crucial, for a fantasy writer to know where the poop and detritus go in the societies they’ve built; it’s part of the worldbuilding that gives an imaginary culture enough weight and heft to convince a reader.

Plus, Jackson’s prose is always marvelously clean, concise, and dryly funny.

By Lee Jackson,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Dirty Old London as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In Victorian London, filth was everywhere: horse traffic filled the streets with dung, household rubbish went uncollected, cesspools brimmed with "night soil," graveyards teemed with rotting corpses, the air itself was choked with smoke. In this intimately visceral book, Lee Jackson guides us through the underbelly of the Victorian metropolis, introducing us to the men and women who struggled to stem a rising tide of pollution and dirt, and the forces that opposed them.

Through thematic chapters, Jackson describes how Victorian reformers met with both triumph and disaster. Full of individual stories and overlooked details-from the dustmen who grew rich…


Book cover of Sailing from Byzantium: How a Lost Empire Shaped the World

Zachary Wingerd Author Of Syria Crucified: Stories of Modern Martyrdom in an Ancient Christian Land

From my list on Christians in the Middle East.

Why am I passionate about this?

I was infuriated to learn how my government was misrepresenting the recent war in Syria. I learned of this deceit from Syrians who had fled their war-torn country and relayed a very different narrative from the one we're all hearing. From 2016-17 Baylor University’s Institute for Oral History sponsored and archived our collection of audio-recorded interviews of Syrian Christians. This book is the end result of their entrusting us with their harrowing testimonies. I'm a Senior Lecturer in History at Baylor University. I routinely teach, among other courses, the history of the United States from a Global Perspective in which I discuss with my students the same lessons I learned while writing Syria Crucified.

Zachary's book list on Christians in the Middle East

Zachary Wingerd Why did Zachary love this book?

Before the Holy Roman Empire, there was Byzantium. Prior to better-known names like Charlemagne or Thomas Aquinas, there were men like Justinian, who codified Roman law for posterity, or Photius the Great, who gave concise theological treatises to eager audiences of the highly literate populace of Asia Minor. Wells explores the heart of Roman civilization in the Eastern Mediterranean where the flourishing Byzantine Empire preserved ancient learning. Sailing from Byzantium investigates the historical and geographic forces at play which eventually made Byzantium a "forgotten" empire, yet which today—whether it's acknowledged or not—has left its indelible mark on the modern world in remarkable ways. This is not just a journey into history, but an intellectual pilgrimage into the time and setting of almost forgotten intellectual and spiritual giants. 

By Colin Wells,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Sailing from Byzantium as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A gripping intellectual adventure story, Sailing from Byzantium sweeps you from the deserts of Arabia to the dark forests of northern Russia, from the colourful towns of Renaissance Italy to the final moments of a millennial city under siege. Byzantium: the successor of Greece and Rome, this magnificent empire bridged the ancient and modern worlds for more than a thousand years. Without Byzantium, the works of Homer and Herodotus, Plato and Aristotle, Sophocles and Aeschylus, would never have survived. Yet very few of us have any idea of the enormous debt we owe them. The story of Byzantium is a…


Book cover of The Byzantine Legacy in the Orthodox Church

Victor Roudometof Author Of Globalization and Orthodox Christianity: The Transformations of a Religious Tradition

From my list on a quick introduction to Orthodox Christianity.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have been a scholar of Orthodox Christianity for more than 20 years; & authored or (co-)edited several books. It took the fall of communism to overcome the relative poverty of Western literature & gain better knowledge of the Orthodox religious landscape. Personally, I am interested in the relationship between Orthodoxy and culture/politics. This relationship runs deep into the heart of several Orthodox nations – as the war in Ukraine aptly demonstrates. By the 21st century, Orthodox Christianity is no longer exclusively affiliated with its historical birthplace of Eastern and Southeastern Europe but there are millions of Orthodox Christians in North America and Western Europe.

Victor's book list on a quick introduction to Orthodox Christianity

Victor Roudometof Why did Victor love this book?

John Meyendorff’s works are indispensable for understanding the theology and history of Orthodox Christianity. 

While several of his contributions belong to the must-read list for students of Orthodox Christianity, this book in particular offers a lucid account and an indispensable introduction to the broader and enduring problematic regarding the deep-seated connections between Byzantium and the historical development of the Orthodox Church.

The book addresses a series of historical events rarely researched and studied and it is a pioneer work highly suited for scholars of religious history.

By John Meyendorff,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Byzantine Legacy in the Orthodox Church as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

For more than a millennium the Byzantine Empire and its capital, Constantinople guided the spiritual destinies of the Christian East. Even after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the influence of its culture, thought and institutions remained powerful, above all in the Orthodox Church.

In this collection of essays, Fr John Meyendorff, one of the most prominent Orthodox historians and theologians of our day, delineates the many facets of this Byzantine legacy. After an initial survey of the Byzantine Church, he explores such varies subjects as Byzantine political ideology, spirituality and ecclesiology. He clearly demonstrates the significance of Byzantium not…


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