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Book Deeds of John   Manuel Comnenus

Download or read book Deeds of John Manuel Comnenus written by j cinnamus (trans whitby, m) and published by . This book was released on 1976 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book Deeds of John and Manuel Comnenus

Download or read book Deeds of John and Manuel Comnenus written by Joannes Cinnamus and published by . This book was released on 1976-01 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Surveying the expanding conflict in Europe during one of his famous fireside chats in 1940, President Franklin Roosevelt ominously warned that "we know of other methods, new methods of attack. The Trojan horse. The fifth column that betrays a nation unprepared for treachery. Spies, saboteurs, and traitors are the actors in this new strategy." Having identified a new type of war--a shadow war--being perpetrated by Hitler's Germany, FDR decided to fight fire with fire, authorizing the formation of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) to organize and oversee covert operations. Based on an extensive analysis of OSS records, including the vast trove of records released by the CIA in the 1980s and '90s, as well as a new set of interviews with OSS veterans conducted by the author and a team of American scholars from 1995 to 1997, The Shadow War Against Hitler is the full story of America's far-flung secret intelligence apparatus during World War II. In addition to its responsibilities generating, processing, and interpreting intelligence information, the OSS orchestrated all manner of dark operations, including extending feelers to anti-Hitler elements, infiltrating spies and sabotage agents behind enemy lines, and implementing propaganda programs. Planned and directed from Washington, the anti-Hitler campaign was largely conducted in Europe, especially through the OSS's foreign outposts in Bern and London. A fascinating cast of characters made the OSS run: William J. Donovan, one of the most decorated individuals in the American military who became the driving force behind the OSS's genesis; Allen Dulles, the future CIA chief who ran the Bern office, which he called "the big window onto the fascist world"; a veritable pantheon of Ivy League academics who were recruited to work for the intelligence services; and, not least, Roosevelt himself. A major contribution of the book is the story of how FDR employed Hitler's former propaganda chief, Ernst "Putzi" Hanfstengl, as a private spy. More than a record of dramatic incidents and daring personalities, this book adds significantly to our understanding of how the United States fought World War II. It demonstrates that the extent, and limitations, of secret intelligence information shaped not only the conduct of the war but also the face of the world that emerged from the shadows.

Book Guide to Byzantine Historical Writing

Download or read book Guide to Byzantine Historical Writing written by Leonora Neville and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-17 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Makes the study of medieval Greek historical writing accessible by providing fundamental orientation and information.

Book The Creation of the Principality of Antioch  1098 1130

Download or read book The Creation of the Principality of Antioch 1098 1130 written by Thomas S. Asbridge and published by Boydell & Brewer Ltd. This book was released on 2000 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first major study of the principality of Antioch, reasserting its significance and challenging the dominance of Jerusalem in modern crusading historiography. The First Crusade wrought many changes across the medieval world, not least in Levant, where the expedition culminated in the Frankish conquest of much of Syria and Palestine. This book is the first major study of the early history of one of these Latin settlements, the principality of Antioch; it reasserts the significance of Antioch, and challenges the dominant position of the kingdom of Jerusalem in modern crusading historiography. Thomas Asbridge examines the formation of Antioch's political, military and ecclesiastical frameworks and explains how the principality survived in the hostile political environment of the Near East. He also demonstrates that Latin Antioch was shapedby the complex world of the Levant, facing a diverse range of influences and potential threats from the neighbouring forces of Byzantium and Islam. Historians of the Frankish East and of medieval Europe in the eleventh century will find this an important contribution to crusading history; it is also a significant contribution to the study of frontier societies and medieval communities. THOMAS S. ASBRIDGE is lecturer in early medieval history at Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London.

Book Medieval Maritime Warfare

    Book Details:
  • Author : Charles D. Stanton
  • Publisher : Pen and Sword
  • Release : 2015-06-30
  • ISBN : 1473856299
  • Pages : 653 pages

Download or read book Medieval Maritime Warfare written by Charles D. Stanton and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2015-06-30 with total page 653 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This sweeping history of maritime warfare through the Middle Ages ranges from the 8th century to the 14th, covering the Mediterranean and Northern Europe. After the fall of Rome, the sea becomes the center of conflict for Western Civilization. In a world of few roads and great disorder, it is where power is projected and wealth is sought. Yet, since this turbulent period in the history of maritime warfare has rarely been studied, it is little known and even less understood. In Medieval Maritime Warfare, Charles Stanton depicts the development of maritime warfare from the end of the Roman Empire to the dawn of the Renaissance, recounting the wars waged in the Mediterranean by the Byzantines, Ottomans, Normans, Crusaders, and the Italian maritime republics, as well as those fought in northern waters by the Vikings, English, French and the Hanseatic League. Weaving together details of medieval ship design and naval strategy with vivid depictions of seafaring culture, this pioneering study makes a significant contribution to maritime history.

Book Crusaders

    Book Details:
  • Author : Dan Jones
  • Publisher : Penguin
  • Release : 2020-10-06
  • ISBN : 0143108972
  • Pages : 481 pages

Download or read book Crusaders written by Dan Jones and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A major new history of the Crusades with an unprecedented wide scope, told in a tableau of portraits of people on all sides of the wars, from the author of Powers and Thrones. For more than one thousand years, Christians and Muslims lived side by side, sometimes at peace and sometimes at war. When Christian armies seized Jerusalem in 1099, they began the most notorious period of conflict between the two religions. Depending on who you ask, the fall of the holy city was either an inspiring legend or the greatest of horrors. In Crusaders, Dan Jones interrogates the many sides of the larger story, charting a deeply human and avowedly pluralist path through the crusading era. Expanding the usual timeframe, Jones looks to the roots of Christian-Muslim relations in the eighth century and tracks the influence of crusading to present day. He widens the geographical focus to far-flung regions home to so-called enemies of the Church, including Spain, North Africa, southern France, and the Baltic states. By telling intimate stories of individual journeys, Jones illuminates these centuries of war not only from the perspective of popes and kings, but from Arab-Sicilian poets, Byzantine princesses, Sunni scholars, Shi'ite viziers, Mamluk slave soldiers, Mongol chieftains, and barefoot friars. Crusading remains a rallying call to this day, but its role in the popular imagination ignores the cooperation and complicated coexistence that were just as much a feature of the period as warfare. The age-old relationships between faith, conquest, wealth, power, and trade meant that crusading was not only about fighting for the glory of God, but also, among other earthly reasons, about gold. In this richly dramatic narrative that gives voice to sources usually pushed to the margins, Dan Jones has written an authoritative survey of the holy wars with global scope and human focus.

Book The Crusades

    Book Details:
  • Author : S.J. Allen
  • Publisher : University of Toronto Press
  • Release : 2024-05-01
  • ISBN : 148753793X
  • Pages : 419 pages

Download or read book The Crusades written by S.J. Allen and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2024-05-01 with total page 419 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since its first appearance in 2004, The Crusades: A Reader has been the go-to sourcebook in the field. S.J. Allen and Emilie Amt cover the entire crusading movement, from its origins to its modern afterlife, using key primary source documents. The third edition features a new introduction that includes a guide for students on how to use the book. The editors have also added more content on women, material culture, Jewish and Byzantine perspectives, Muslim-Crusader interactions, and modern use of Crusade imagery and rhetoric by the Far Right. The geographic range is broad, covering not only Crusades in the Middle East, but also in Spain and in northern Europe and against European heretics. While scholarship, courses, and textbooks on the Crusades have proliferated over the past twenty years, The Crusades: A Reader remains the only comprehensive, up-to-date, and in-print sourcebook available on the subject.

Book Conflict  Bargaining  and Kinship Networks in Medieval Eastern Europe

Download or read book Conflict Bargaining and Kinship Networks in Medieval Eastern Europe written by Christian Raffensperger and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2018-04-26 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conflict, Bargaining, and Kinship Networks in Medieval Eastern Europe takes the familiar view of Eastern Europe, families, and conflicts and stands it on its head. Instead of a world rife with civil war and killing, this book presents a relatively structured environment where conflict is engaged in for the purposes of advancing one’s position, and where death among the royal families is relatively rare. At the heart of this analysis is the use of situational kinship networks—relationships created by elites for the purposes of engaging in conflict with their own kin, but only for the duration of a particular conflict. A new image of medieval Eastern Europe, less consumed by civil war and mass death, will change the perception of medieval Eastern Europe in the minds of readers. This new perception is essential to not only present the past more accurately, but also to allow for medieval Eastern Europe’s integration into the larger medieval world as something other than an aberrant other.

Book Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages  500 1250

Download or read book Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages 500 1250 written by Florin Curta and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-08-31 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is an authoritative survey of the history of southeastern Europe from 500 to 1250.

Book The Occult Sciences in Byzantium

Download or read book The Occult Sciences in Byzantium written by Paul Magdalino and published by La Pomme d'or. This book was released on 2006 with total page 469 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume represents the first attempt to examine occult sciences as a distinct category of Byzantine intellectual culture. It is concerned with both the reality and the image of the occult sciences in Byzantium, and seeks, above all, to represent them in their social and cultural context as a historical phenomenon. The eleven essays demonstrate that Byzantium was not marginal to the scientific culture of the Middle Ages, and that the occult sciences were not marginal to the learned culture of the medieval Byzantine world.

Book Imagining the Byzantine Past

Download or read book Imagining the Byzantine Past written by Elena N. Boeck and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-07-09 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two lavish, illustrated histories confronted and contested the Byzantine model of empire. The Madrid Skylitzes was created at the court of Roger II of Sicily in the mid-twelfth century. The Vatican Manasses was produced for Ivan Alexander of Bulgaria in the mid-fourteenth century. Through close analysis of how each chronicle was methodically manipulated, this study argues that Byzantine history was selectively re-imagined to suit the interests of outsiders. The Madrid Skylitzes foregrounds regicides, rebellions, and palace intrigue in order to subvert the divinely ordained image of order that Byzantine rulers preferred to project. The Vatican Manasses presents Byzantium as a platform for the accession of Ivan Alexander to the throne of the Third Rome, the last and final world-empire. Imagining the Byzantine Past demonstrates how distinct visions of empire generated diverging versions of Byzantium's past in the aftermath of the Crusades.

Book The Crusades  A Reader

    Book Details:
  • Author : S.J. Allen
  • Publisher : University of Toronto Press
  • Release : 2014-01-01
  • ISBN : 1442606231
  • Pages : 465 pages

Download or read book The Crusades A Reader written by S.J. Allen and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2014-01-01 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the publication of the first edition of The Crusades: A Reader, interest in the Crusades has increased dramatically, fueled in part by current global interactions between the Muslim world and Western nations. The second edition features an intriguing new chapter on perceptions of the Crusades in the modern period, from David Hume and William Wordsworth to World War I political cartoons and crusading rhetoric circulating after 9/11. Islamic accounts of the treatment of prisoners have been added, as well as sources detailing the homecoming of those who had ventured to the Holy Land--including a newly translated reading on a woman crusader, Margaret of Beverly. The book contains sixteen images, study questions for each reading, and an index.

Book Louis VII and His World

Download or read book Louis VII and His World written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-06-05 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Louis VII and His World examines a lesser-known yet significant Capetian monarch and his role in the twelfth century. The essays focus upon the king’s leadership, administration and his connection to the events of the age.

Book The Miraculous and the Writing of Crusade Narrative

Download or read book The Miraculous and the Writing of Crusade Narrative written by Beth C. Spacey and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2020 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First comprehensive study of miracles in Crusade narrative, showing how and why they were deployed by their authors.

Book Piroska and the Pantokrator

    Book Details:
  • Author : Marianne Sághy
  • Publisher : Central European University Press
  • Release : 2019-10-09
  • ISBN : 9633862973
  • Pages : 360 pages

Download or read book Piroska and the Pantokrator written by Marianne Sághy and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2019-10-09 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is about the Christ Pantokrator, an imposing monumental complex serving monastic, dynastic, medical and social purposes in Constantinople, founded by Emperor John II Komnenos and Empress Piroska-Eirene in 1118. Now called the Zeyrek Mosque, the second largest Byzantine religious edifice after Hagia Sophia still standing in Istanbul represents the most remarkable architectural and the most ambitious social project of the Komnenian dynasty. This volume approaches the Pantokrator from a special perspective, focusing on its co-founder, Empress Piroska-Eirene, the daughter of the Hungarian king Ladislaus I. This particular vantage point enables its authors to explore not only the architecture, the monastic and medical functions of the complex, but also Hungarian-Byzantine relations, the cultural and religious history of early medieval Hungary, imperial representation, personal faith and dynastic holiness. Piroska's wedding with John Komnenos came to be perceived as a union of East and West. The life of the Empress, a "sainted ruler," and her memory in early Árpádian Hungary and Komnenian Byzantium are discussed in the context of women and power, monastic foundations, architectural innovations, and spiritual models.

Book A Companion to the Byzantine Culture of War  ca  300 1204

Download or read book A Companion to the Byzantine Culture of War ca 300 1204 written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-09-04 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Byzantine Culture of War offers a critical approach to the study of military organisation and warfare as fundamental aspects of the East Roman society and culture in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages.

Book The Experience of Crusading

Download or read book The Experience of Crusading written by Marcus Graham Bull and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-06-23 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of essays focusing on the history and politics of the Latin East.