The Adventures of Ibn Battuta: A Muslim Traveler of the Fourteenth Century

Ibn Fadlān and the Land of Darkness: Arab Travellers in the Far North

'Hmd bn fDln, Ahmad ibn Fadlan · 256 pages

"In 922 AD, an Arab envoy from Baghdad named Ibn Fadlan encountered a party of Viking traders on the upper reaches of the Volga River. In his subsequent report on his mission he gave a meticulous and astonishingly objective description of Viking customs, dress, table manners, religion and sexual practices, as well as the only eyewitness account ever written of a Viking ship cremation. Between the

Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu

Laurence Bergreen · 415 pages

Ghost Empire

Richard Fidler · 516 pages

In 2014, Richard Fidler and his son Joe made a journey to Istanbul. Fired by Richard's passion for the rich history of the dazzling Byzantine Empire - centred around the legendary Constantinople - we are swept into some of the most extraordinary tales in history.The clash of civilizations, the fall of empires, the rise of Christianity, revenge, lust, murder. Turbulent stories from the past are bro

In an Antique Land: History in the Guise of a Traveler's Tale

Amitav Ghosh · 393 pages

Overview: Once upon a time an Indian writer named Amitav Ghosh set out to find an Indian slave, name unknown, who some seven hundred years before had traveled to the Middle East. The journey took him to a small village in Egypt, where medieval customs coexist with twentieth-century desires and discontents. But even as Ghosh sought to re-create the life of his Indian predecessor, he found himself i

The Travels

Marco Polo · 480 pages

"Marco Polo was the most famous traveller of his time. His voyages began in 1271 with a visit to China, after which he served the Kublai Khan on numerous diplomatic missions. On his return to the West he was made a prisoner of war and met Rustichello of Pisa, with whom he collaborated on this book. His account of his travels offers a fascinating glimpse of what he encountered abroad: unfamiliar re

Who Was Marco Polo?

Joan Holub · 105 pages

Una biografía del famoso viajero veneciano medieval, Marco Polo. A biography of the famous medieval Venetian traveler, Marco Polo.

The Travels of Ibn Battutah

Ibn Battuta · 400 pages

Ibn Battutah – ethnographer, bigrapher, anecdotal historian and occasional botanist – was just twenty-one when he set out in 1325 from his native Tangier on a pilgramage to Mecca . . . He did not return to Morocco for another twenty-nine years, travelling instead through more than forty countries on the modern map, covering seventy-five thousand miles and getting as far north as the Volga, as far

1421: The Year China Discovered America

Gavin Menzies · 649 pages

This volume presents the author's assertion that the fleets of Chinese Admiral Zheng visited the Americas prior to European explorer Christopher Columbus in 1492, and that this same Chinese fleet circumnavigated the globe a century before the expedition of Ferdinand Magellan. The author presents a series of vignettes describing his travels around the globe, examining what he claims is evidence for

Color: A Natural History of the Palette

Victoria Finlay · 448 pages

London: The Biography

Peter Ackroyd · 824 pages

"London: The Biography is the pinnacle of Peter Ackroyd's brilliant obsession with the eponymous city. In this work, Ackroyd brings the reader through time into the city whose institutions and idiosyncrasies have permeated much of his works of fiction and nonfiction.". "Peter Ackroyd sees London as a living, breathing organism, with its own laws of growth and change. Reveling in the city's riches

The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller

Carlo Ginzburg · 177 pages

The Maid and the Queen: The Secret History of Joan of Arc

Nancy Goldstone

Blood Sisters: The Women Behind The War Of The Roses

Sarah Gristwood · 408 pages

"In Pembroke Castle, on 28 January 1457, the 13-year-old Margaret Beaufort gave birth to a son she named Henry. Her husband was already dead; her sufferings in childbirth were grave... England was in the grip of civil war - the War of the Roses. Known to contemporaries as 'The Cousins War', beyond the fields of battle raged a family feud, a violent and emotional domestic drama. For the noble women

Queens Consort: England's Medieval Queens from Eleanor of Aquitaine to Elizabeth of York

Lisa Hilton · 536 pages

The Alexiad

Anna Comnena · 560 pages

"Anna Comnena (1083-1153) wrote The Alexiad as an account of the reign of her father, the Byzantine Emperor Alexius I. It is also an important source of information on the Byzantine war with the Normans, and on the First Crusade, in which Alexius participated. While the Byzantines were allied to the Crusaders, they were none the less critical of their behaviour and Anna's book offers a startlingly

The Greatest Knight: The Remarkable Life of William Marshal, The Power Behind Five English Thrones

Thomas Asbridge · 464 pages

The story of the largely forgotten William Marshal Pembroke of the English medieval period, who, "as a five-year-old boy ... was sentenced to execution and led to the gallows, yet this landless younger son survived his brush with death, and went on to train as a medieval knight. Against all odds, [he] rose through the ranks--serving at the right hand of five English monarchs--to become a celebrate

The Last Days of Richard III

John Ashdown-Hill · 190 pages

This book contains details about what Richard III did in his last five months, what happened to his body, and how his DNA was found in Canada. This book explores these events from the standpoint of Richard himself and his contemporaries. By deliberately avoiding the hindsight knowledge that he will lose the Battle of Bosworth Field, this book presents a new Richard - not a passive victim, awaiting

The Women of the Cousins' War: The Duchess, the Queen, and the King's Mother

Philippa Gregory, David Baldwin, Michael K. Jones · 342 pages

A non-fiction companion to The White Queen, The Red Queen, and The Lady of the Rivers. Philippa Gregory and two historians, leading experts in their field, tell the extraordinary 'true' stories of the lives of these women who until now have been largely forgotten by history, their background and times, highlighting questions which are raised in the fiction and illuminating the novels. With a forew

William Marshal: The Flower of Chivalry

Georges Duby · 155 pages

Uppity Women of Medieval Times

Vicki Leon · 264 pages

"200 Daring Damsels who dazzled the dark ages and rocked the renaissance. From blacksmiths, bankers, plague-ridders, and sheep thieves to secret agents, pirates, holy women, and holy terrors, medieval women around the world used wits, wiles, patrons, and networking to make a winning hand of their lives." --Back cover

The Far Traveler: Voyages of a Viking Woman

Nancy Marie Brown · 313 pages

Five hundred years before Columbus, a Viking woman named Gudrid sailed past the edge of the known world. She landed in the New World and lived there for three years, giving birth to a baby before sailing home. Or so the Icelandic sagas say. Even after archaeologists found a Viking longhouse in Newfoundland, few believed that the details of Gudrid's story were true. Then, in 2001, a team of scienti

A Great and Terrible King: Edward I and the Forging of Britain

Marc Morris · 471 pages

She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth

Helen Castor · 477 pages

When Edward VI died in 1553, the extraordinary fact was that there was no one left to claim the title of king of England. For the first time, England would have a reigning queen, but the question was which one: Katherine of Aragon's daughter, Mary; Anne Boleyn's daughter, Elizabeth; or one of their cousins, Lady Jane Grey or Mary, Queen of Scots. But female rule in England also had a past. Four h

The Perfect King: The Life of Edward III, Father of the English Nation

Ian Mortimer · 448 pages