Byzantium (Constantinopel, Istanbul) and the Byzantine Empire have an impressive history which is however a bit forgotten. Before reading this book I thought Byzantium and its empire (5th - 15th century) was only a shadow of the Roman Empire. I was wrong. Authour Judith Herrin explains why in this fascinating book. She reconstructs the surprising life of a medieval empire which played a crucial role in the world history. It was also a continuation of the western Roman empire after Rome fell to the 'barbarians'. That is also why the Byzantine emperors considered themselves as Romans. Judith Herrin knows how to make forgotten history alive and kicking. She also makes clear that our eurocentric view of medieval history and Byzantium needs a serious correction. I can recommend this book to everyone. ( )

I was very impressed by this. With the exception of a few chapters at the beginning and end, it's not a strict history of events; rather, it's a selection of chapters on a range of different topics, arranged in a rough chronological order. The topics are fairly widely chosen - six successive chapters, for example, talk about Greek fire, the medieval Byzantine economy, the status of eunuchs, the Imperial court, dynastic succession and the idea of porphyrogenitos, and Mount Athos. A useful result of this approach was that the book lent itself to intermittent reading - you could pick it up whilst cooking dinner or going to bed, run through a section and put it down without worrying about losing track of the overall thread.

The history it discusses, well. It's remarkable. I knew very little about Byzantine history; "this vague thing in the East that hung on a long time" was about the sum of it. In many ways, that's the strength of a book like this; the breadth and depth of what it covers, gives a real feel for what the empire was, its significance and its - well, its liveliness. There's a comment at the end about Byzantium always being thought of as this passive, decaying, rump of a state, and I think that's quite true; this very successfully challenges it. It's also a bit of a shock to the standard way of thinking about the period between about 400 and 1400; it's easy to fall into a trap of assuming that the piece of European history we know best is representative of the whole thing to some degree or another, and this really does confront you with the fact that that just doesn't work. So, thought-provoking, at least for someone like me whose pre-Renaissance history is vague at best.

One quibble would be that the last section - covering the sack of Byzantium in 1204 through to the fall to the Ottomans in 1453 - seemed a bit rushed, but I think this might be a reflection of my wanting to read more on the period rather than a systemic flaw.

An excellent review of the Byzantine Empire that complements a more chronological presentation. Herrin approaches the subject by topic rather than by date. ( )

An excelllent and surprisingly easy to read description of a fascinating 1000 year empire. Unlike many other histories of this subject, it is written as a series of chronological themes - most interesting. ( )

An excellent history, with well explained themes. ( )