RAVENNA, by Herrin NOTE: Meeting Online

Fascinating History
Thursday, March 23, 7:00 pm

The Fascinating History Book Group is led by P&P's Shane Cagney (scagney@politics-prose.com) and meets the fourth Tuesday and Thursday of each month at 7 p.m.

Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe By Judith Herrin Cover Image

Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe (Paperback)

$21.95


In Stock—Click for Locations
Politics and Prose at 5015 Connecticut Avenue NW
3 on hand, as of Mar 29 1:19pm
Politics and Prose at 70 District Square SW
1 on hand, as of Mar 29 1:33pm
Politics and Prose at Union Market
1 on hand, as of Mar 29 1:34pm

A riveting history of the city that led the West out of the ruins of the Roman Empire

At the end of the fourth century, as the power of Rome faded and Constantinople became the seat of empire, a new capital city was rising in the West. Here, in Ravenna on the coast of Italy, Arian Goths and Catholic Romans competed to produce an unrivaled concentration of buildings and astonishing mosaics. For three centuries, the city attracted scholars, lawyers, craftsmen, and religious luminaries, becoming a true cultural and political capital. Bringing this extraordinary history marvelously to life, Judith Herrin rewrites the history of East and West in the Mediterranean world before the rise of Islam and shows how, thanks to Byzantine influence, Ravenna played a crucial role in the development of medieval Christendom.

Drawing on deep, original research, Herrin tells the personal stories of Ravenna while setting them in a sweeping synthesis of Mediterranean and Christian history. She narrates the lives of the Empress Galla Placidia and the Gothic king Theoderic and describes the achievements of an amazing cosmographer and a doctor who revived Greek medical knowledge in Italy, demolishing the idea that the West just descended into the medieval "Dark Ages."

Beautifully illustrated and drawing on the latest archaeological findings, this monumental book provides a bold new interpretation of Ravenna's lasting influence on the culture of Europe and the West.
Judith Herrin is professor emeritus in the Department of Classics at King's College London. Her books include Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire; Unrivalled Influence: Women and Empire in Byzantium; Margins and Metropolis: Authority across the Byzantine Empire; Women in Purple: Rulers of Medieval Byzantium; and The Formation of Christendom (all Princeton). She lives in Oxford, England.
Product Details ISBN: 9780691204222
ISBN-10: 0691204225
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Publication Date: April 12th, 2022
Pages: 608
Language: English


RAVENNA, by Herrin NOTE: Meeting Online

Fascinating History
Tuesday, March 21, 7:00 pm

The Fascinating History Book Group is led by P&P's Shane Cagney (scagney@politics-prose.com) and meets the fourth Tuesday and Thursday of each month at 7 p.m.

Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe By Judith Herrin Cover Image

Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe (Paperback)

$21.95


In Stock—Click for Locations
Politics and Prose at 5015 Connecticut Avenue NW
3 on hand, as of Mar 29 1:19pm
Politics and Prose at 70 District Square SW
1 on hand, as of Mar 29 1:33pm
Politics and Prose at Union Market
1 on hand, as of Mar 29 1:34pm

A riveting history of the city that led the West out of the ruins of the Roman Empire

At the end of the fourth century, as the power of Rome faded and Constantinople became the seat of empire, a new capital city was rising in the West. Here, in Ravenna on the coast of Italy, Arian Goths and Catholic Romans competed to produce an unrivaled concentration of buildings and astonishing mosaics. For three centuries, the city attracted scholars, lawyers, craftsmen, and religious luminaries, becoming a true cultural and political capital. Bringing this extraordinary history marvelously to life, Judith Herrin rewrites the history of East and West in the Mediterranean world before the rise of Islam and shows how, thanks to Byzantine influence, Ravenna played a crucial role in the development of medieval Christendom.

Drawing on deep, original research, Herrin tells the personal stories of Ravenna while setting them in a sweeping synthesis of Mediterranean and Christian history. She narrates the lives of the Empress Galla Placidia and the Gothic king Theoderic and describes the achievements of an amazing cosmographer and a doctor who revived Greek medical knowledge in Italy, demolishing the idea that the West just descended into the medieval "Dark Ages."

Beautifully illustrated and drawing on the latest archaeological findings, this monumental book provides a bold new interpretation of Ravenna's lasting influence on the culture of Europe and the West.
Judith Herrin is professor emeritus in the Department of Classics at King's College London. Her books include Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire; Unrivalled Influence: Women and Empire in Byzantium; Margins and Metropolis: Authority across the Byzantine Empire; Women in Purple: Rulers of Medieval Byzantium; and The Formation of Christendom (all Princeton). She lives in Oxford, England.
Product Details ISBN: 9780691204222
ISBN-10: 0691204225
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Publication Date: April 12th, 2022
Pages: 608
Language: English


CLEOPATRA: A LIFE, by Schiff NOTE: Meeting Online

Fascinating History
Thursday, February 23, 7:00 pm

The Fascinating History Book Group is led by P&P's Shane Cagney (scagney@politics-prose.com) and meets online, fourth Tuesday and Thursday of the month in 2022 at 7 p.m.

Cleopatra: A Life By Stacy Schiff Cover Image

Cleopatra: A Life (Paperback)

$19.99


In Stock—Click for Locations
Politics and Prose at 5015 Connecticut Avenue NW
4 on hand, as of Mar 29 1:19pm

November 2010 Indie Next List


“Here is a wonderful antidote to the endless salacious fictionalizations of Cleopatra. Well researched and documented, this biography draws a complete portrait of Cleopatra and her age, and the wealth of detail is balanced by a strong narrative thread. Schiff has a natural sensitivity for her subject, and it turns out that the real Cleo may be even more interesting than our imagined one!”
— Jennie Turner-Collins, Joseph-Beth Booksellers, Cincinnati, OH

Summer 2012 Reading Group


“Here is a wonderful antidote to the endless salacious fictionalizations of Cleopatra. Well researched and documented, this biography draws a complete portrait of Cleopatra and her age, and the wealth of detail is balanced by a strong narrative thread. Schiff has a natural sensitivity for her subject, and it turns out that the real Cleo may be even more interesting than our imagined one!”
— Jennie Turner-Collins, Joseph-Beth Booksellers, Cincinnati, OH

The Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer brings to life the most intriguing woman in the history of the world: Cleopatra, the last queen of Egypt.

Her palace shimmered with onyx, garnets, and gold, but was richer still in political and sexual intrigue. Above all else, Cleopatra was a shrewd strategist and an ingenious negotiator.

Though her life spanned fewer than forty years, it reshaped the contours of the ancient world. She was married twice, each time to a brother. She waged a brutal civil war against the first when both were teenagers. She poisoned the second. Ultimately she dispensed with an ambitious sister as well; incest and assassination were family specialties. Cleopatra appears to have had sex with only two men. They happen, however, to have been Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, among the most prominent Romans of the day. Both were married to other women. Cleopatra had a child with Caesar and -- after his murder -- three more with his protégé. Already she was the wealthiest ruler in the Mediterranean; the relationship with Antony confirmed her status as the most influential woman of the age. The two would together attempt to forge a new empire, in an alliance that spelled their ends. Cleopatra has lodged herself in our imaginations ever since.

Famous long before she was notorious, Cleopatra has gone down in history for all the wrong reasons. Shakespeare and Shaw put words in her mouth. Michelangelo, Tiepolo, and Elizabeth Taylor put a face to her name. Along the way, Cleopatra's supple personality and the drama of her circumstances have been lost. In a masterly return to the classical sources, Stacy Schiff here boldly separates fact from fiction to rescue the magnetic queen whose death ushered in a new world order. Rich in detail, epic in scope, Schiff 's is a luminous, deeply original reconstruction of a dazzling life.
Stacy Schiff is the author of Véra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov), winner of the Pulitzer Prize; Saint-Exupéry, a Pulitzer Prize finalist; A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America, winner of the George Washington Book Prize and the Ambassador Book Award; Cleopatra: A Life, winner of the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for biography; and The Witches: Salem, 1692.

Schiff has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and named a Chevalier des Arts et Lettres by the French Government, she lives in New York City.
Product Details ISBN: 9780316001946
ISBN-10: 0316001945
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Publication Date: September 6th, 2011
Pages: 432
Language: English
"Stacy Schiff does a rare thing: She gives us a book we'd miss if it didn't exist."—Wall Street Journal

"A masterpiece."—Daily Beast

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