The new Roman empire A history of Byzantium

This very readable text summarizes 1,153 years of the Eastern Roman Empire, also known as the Byzantine Empire, and advances a long-delayed argument for the recognition of its Greek heritage in protecting a nascent Europe and the heritage of Hellenism. Over the past five centuries, Western scholarship has chronicled the empire's vicissitudes and its declining accomplishments from the researchers' own perspectives, often denying its connection to the Roman Empire. As Kaldellis (classics, Univ. of Chicago) writes, "[W]estern scholars and institutions have invidiously denied that this polity and its people were Roman at all" (p. 3). In over 1,000 pages, the author outlines the story of a Greek-based empire that defended the West even as it faced its final destruction by a reborn East. Good maps and illustrations assist readers in this classicist's and Byzantinist's insightful tour of the last stages of the Roman Empire. Summing Up: Recommended. General readers through faculty. --Steven B Bowman, emeritus, University of Cincinnati

This is the first major history of the Eastern Roman Empire to appear in a generation. Kaldellis (classics, Univ. of Chicago: A Cabinet of Byzantine Curiosities) does excellent work detailing assumptions and resetting how readers understand Byzantium. There is, for example, a long history of interpreting the Byzantine Empire's past through Western instead of Eastern lenses. It starts with names. They called themselves "Romans," but Westerners referred to them as "Greeks." They called their land Romania, but that term doesn't appear in even today's reference materials. The Eastern Roman Empire lasted for 1,100 years, and for nearly a millennium it was a major player on the international scene. Andronikos III Palaiologos, the last emperor to attempt to recoup the empire's losses, died in 1341. Within a decade, his gains were gone, and the Roman state halved when a bubonic plague killed (it is believed) 30 to 60 percent of the population. Utilizing an impressive scope of recent research, Kaldellis refutes older views of the Roman state as despotic. Forty-two of 91 emperors may have come to power through violence, but the shared assumptions of subjects and rulers conferred on it lasting endurance. VERDICT Outstanding in every aspect.--David Keymer