A sweeping new history of how climate change and disease helped bring down the Roman Empire Here is the monumental retelling of one of the most consequential chapters of human history: the fall of the Roman Empire. The Fate of Rome is the first book to examine the catastrophic role that climate change and infectious diseases played in the collapse of Rome's power--a story of nature's triumph over human ambition. Interweaving a grand historical narrative...

"Ancient civilisations exercise an intense fascination for people the world over. This book takes the 'story' of religion as far back as Palaeolithic cave art, tracing the religious beliefs of ancient Egypt, Ugarit, Mesopotamia, ancient Israel, Greece and Rome, ancient Europe, the Indus Valley civilisation, ancient China and the Aztecs and Incas. Each set of religious beliefs and practices is described in its cultural and historical context, via a...

"Prince Alexos, the long-awaited champion of the goddess Athene, follows the course of his destiny through war and loss and a deadly confrontation with his enemy to its end: shipwreck on a magical, fog-shrouded island. There he meets the unforgettable Aria and faces the greatest challenge of his life. Based loosely on Shakespeare's The Tempest"--

"No one in the bustling city of Pompeii worries when the ground trembles beneath their feet. The beast under the mountain Vesuvius, high above the city, wakes up angry sometimes -- and always goes back to sleep. But Marcus is afraid. He knows something is terribly wrong -- and his father, who trusts science more than mythical beasts, agrees. When Vesuvius explodes into a cloud of fiery ash and rocks fall from the sky like rain, will they have time...

"Overwhelmed by the responsibilities of running a ranch on her own, Laurel Tracey decides to hire a convict--a man who's just scary enough to take care of squatters and just desperate enough to agree to a one year post. The years following the war have been hard on Laurel Tracey. Both her brother and her father died in battle, and her mother passed away shortly after receiving word of their demise. Laurel has been trying to run her two hundred acre...

In Ancient Rome, all the best stories have one thing in common: murder. Romulus killed Remus to found the city. Caesar was assassinated to save the Republic. Caligula was butchered in the theater, Claudius was poisoned at dinner, and Galba was beheaded in the Forum. In one 50-year period, 26 emperors were murdered. But what did killing mean in a city where gladiators fought to the death to sate a crowd? In A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the...

A to Z of Ancient Greek and Roman Women, Revised Edition includes more than 500 fascinating life stories ranging from pagan Greece in the seventh century BCE to the rise of Christianity in the fourth century CE.

Twelve-year-olds Alex and Renata are on the run from the Order, which is on the brink of creating an army of indestructible stone warriors to carry out their evil schemes, and only the Lost Spells which his mother used to bring Alex back to life can stop them--and undoing the powerful magic that created the chaos that is now loose in Egypt might very well kill him.

"Guy Davenport was perhaps the last great American polymath. He provided links between art and literature, music and sculpture, modernist poets and classic philosophers, the past and present-and pretty much everything in between. Not only had Davenport seemingly read (and often translated from the original languages) everything in print, he also had the ability, expressed with unalloyed enthusiasm, to draw connections between how cultural synapses...