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The Marriage Of Likeness: Same-Sex Unions In Pre-modern Europe
John Boswell · back to the book
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorThe Borgias: The Hidden History
G.J. Meyer · 478 pages
Sweeping aside the gossip, slander, and distortion that have shrouded the Borgias for centuries, G. J. Meyer offers an unprecedented portrait of the infamous Renaissance family and their storied milieu. They burst out of obscurity in Spain to capture the great prize of the papacy, not once but twice. Throughout a tumultuous half-century--as popes, statesmen, warriors, lovers, and breathtakingly am
Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths
Karen Armstrong · 476 pages
"Jerusalem has been venerated for centuries as a Holy City by Jews, Christians, and Muslims. How this came to be and what it means both to the people of Jerusalem and to millions around the world is now richly told by the author of the best-selling and widely acclaimed A History of God.". "In every major religion, a "holy place" has helped men and women define their own place, indeed their own im
The Great Arab Conquests: How the Spread of Islam Changed the World We Live In
Hugh Kennedy · 421 pages
Examines the history of the great Islamic expansion, reveals how the Arab armies were able to overcome almost everything in their path, and brings to light the unique characteristics of Islamic settlement in new lands and the conversion to Islam of vast populations.
Joan of Arc: A Life Transfigured
Kathryn Harrison · 399 pages
A fully documented, inspiring portrait of the 15th-century peasant-turned-saint draws on historical facts, folklore and centuries of critical interpretation to evaluate the questions attributed to her character.
The Real Middle-Earth: Magic and Mystery in the Dark Ages
Brian Bates · 320 pages
Tolkien readily admitted that the concept of Middle-earth was not his own invention. An Old English term for the Dark Age world, it was always assumed that the importance of magic in this world existed only in Tolkien's works; now Professor Brian Bates reveals the vivid truth about this historical culture. Behind the stories we know of Dark Age king and queens, warriors and battles, lies the hidde
The Story of the Jews: Finding the Words, 1000 BCE – 1492 CE
Simon Schama · 512 pages
Lost Islamic History: Reclaiming Muslim Civilisation from the Past
Firas Alkhateeb · 217 pages
"Islam has been one of the most powerful religious, social, and political forces in history. Over the last 1400 years, from origins in Arabia, a succession of Muslim polities and later empires expanded to control territories and peoples that ultimately stretched from southern France, to East Africa to South East Asia. Yet many of the contributions of Muslim thinkers, scientists, and theologians, n
The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity
Peter R.L. Brown · 204 pages
The Night Battles: Witchcraft & Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth & Seventeenth Centuries
Carlo Ginzburg · 216 pages
Based on research in the Inquisitorial archives, the book recounts the story of a peasant fertility cult centered on the benandanti. These men and women regarded themselves as professional anti-witches, who (in dream-like states) apparently fought ritual battles against witches and wizards, to protect their villages and harvests. If they won, the harvest would be good, if they lost, there would be
How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization
Thomas E. Woods Jr. · 256 pages
The Reformation
Will Durant · 1,025 pages
The Templars: History & Myth
Michael Haag · 368 pages
The Thirteenth Tribe: The Khazar Empire and its Heritage
Arthur Koestler · 255 pages
"The Khazars (Turkish: Hazarlar) were a semi-nomadic Turkic people who created one of the largest states of medieval Eurasia, Khazaria, with its capital at Atil. Astride one of the major arteries of commerce between northern Europe and southwestern Asia, Khazaria commanded the western marches of the Silk Road and played a key commercial role as a crossroad between China, the Middle East, and Europ
Jerusalem: The Biography
Simon Sebag Montefiore · 672 pages
Jerusalem is the universal city, the capital of two peoples, the shrine of three faiths; it is the prize of empires, the site of Judgement Day and the battlefield of today's clash of civilizations. From King David to Barack Obama, from the birth of Judaism, Christianity and Islam to the Israel-Palestine conflict, this is the epic history of three thousand years of faith, slaughter, fanaticism and
Absolute Monarchs: A History of the Papacy
John Julius Norwich · 536 pages
A comprehensive, rollicking, and timely history of the papacy.
The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia—and How It Died
Philip Jenkins · 318 pages
In this groundbreaking book, renowned religion scholar Philip Jenkins offers a lost history, revealing that, for centuries, Christianity's center was actually in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa, with significant communities extending as far as China. The Lost History of Christianity unveils a vast and forgotten network of the world's largest and most influential Christian churches that existed t
How the Irish Saved Civilization
Thomas Cahill · 246 pages
From the fall of Rome to the rise of Charlemagne - the "dark ages" - learning, scholarship, and culture disappeared from the European continent. The great heritage of western civilization - from the Greek and Roman classics to Jewish and Christian works - would have been utterly lost were it not for the holy men and women of unconquered Ireland. In this delightful and illuminating look into a cru
God's War: A New History of the Crusades
Christopher Tyerman · 1,023 pages
The story of how a group of warriors, driven by faith, greed and wanderlust, carved out new Christian-ruled states in the Middle East is one of the most extraordinary of all epics. The crusaders' stunning initial success started a sequence of great Crusades, each with its own story, that fundamentally shaped the Christian and Muslim worlds for two centuries, until the last Crusader castles were fi
Warriors of God: Richard the Lionheart and Saladin in the Third Crusade
James Reston Jr. · 312 pages
The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain
Maria Rosa Menocal · 315 pages
A brilliant and fascinating portrait of medieval Spain explores the golden age when Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived together in an atmosphere of tolerance. of photos. 3 maps.
The New Concise History of the Crusades
Thomas F. Madden · 259 pages
"How have the crusades contributed to Islamist rage and terrorism today? Were the crusades the Christian equivalent of modern jihad? In this sweeping yet crisp history, Thomas Madden offers a narrative of the crusades and their contemporary relevance." "Placing all the major crusades within their medieval social, economic, religious, and intellectual environments, Madden explores the uniquely medi
Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error
Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie · 383 pages
"Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie has had a success which few historians experience and which is usually reserved for the winner of the Prix Goncourt...Montaillou, which is the reconstruction of the social life of a medieval village, has been acclaimed by the experts as a masterpiece of ethnographic history and by the public as a sensational revelation of the thoughts, feelings, and activities of the ordin
Sword of Allah: Khalid bin Al-Waleed
A.I. Akram · 532 pages
The Templars
Piers Paul Read · 368 pages