City Travel Guides
Home Page > Go back a page
Books : Empires of the Sea: The Final Battle for the Mediterranean, 1521-1580
Search Books - select a category
See Larger Image |
Empires of the Sea: The Final Battle for the Mediterranean, 1521-1580 by: Roger Crowley List Price: £20.00 City Travel Guides Price: £12.00 You Save: £8.00 (40%)Prices subject to change. |
|
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
Binding: Hardcover EAN: 9780571232307 ISBN: 0571232302 Label: Faber and Faber Manufacturer: Faber and Faber Number Of Pages: 368 Publication Date: May 01, 2008 Publisher: Faber and Faber Studio: Faber and Faber Sales Rank: 4428 Related Items:
Related Items:      see moreBrowse for similar items by category:
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
 Rating:  - Superb narrative history of an epic struggleThe clash of civilisations is not a new notion. Civilisations have clashed for thousands of years, as rival tribes and nations with varying cultural mores and religious beliefs have struggled for supremacy. In recorded history, Greek fought Persian, Roman fought Carthaginian (and countless others), and Christian fought Muslim. It's the latter that we think of today when we shudder at the memory of 9/11 or sigh over the pointless loss of life in the Middle East. This is a struggle that has flared up intermittently since the First Crusade in 1096 brought a motley crew of robber knights, religious zealots and sundry opportunists to wrest the holy places of Palestine from the hands of their Muslim overlords. The crusades ... Read More: Rating:  - UnputdownableSome of the great thrillers are impossible to put down - you want to know what happens to the characters and what great plot twist is coming next - even if you sometimes know the hero will survive somehow. But that's fiction, this isn't. Roger Crowley writes about this extraordinary period of European history with the same pace and energy as the best fiction writers and his real-life characters provide him with just as many plot twists and just as many amazing heroes. You may know a bit about the 16th Century - Henry VIII and his wives, Luther, Leonardo da Vinci, Shakespeare, the Gregorian calendar, Cortés and Drake, but this is a whole new story played out on the fringes of our school-taught history. It's completely ... Read More: Rating: - History as it should be written.The conflict between Ottoman Turkey and Christian Spain for mastery of the Mediterranean basin had a huge influence on the development of the modern world, yet is probably not something you know very much about, even if you studied history at school. Roger Crowley deals with the key period of this struggle during the 16th Century in a page-turner of a narrative peopled with almost larger-than-life personalities - Suleiman the Magnificent, Bluebeard the Pirate (actually there were father and son Bluebeards) - Andrea Doria, the mercenary Admiral, and a supporting cast of Kings and Popes. What becomes clear is how very close the Ottomans came to extending their Empire into France, Italy and Spain, and how much better organised they were than the European ... Read More: |
|