A dazzling account of the men (and occasional woman) who led the world’s empires, a book that probes the essence of leadership and power through the centuries and around the world. From the rise of Sargon of Akkad, who in the third millennium BCE ruled what is now Iraq and Syria, to the collapse of the great European empires in the twentieth century, the empire has been the dominant form of power in history. Dominic Lieven’s expansive book explores strengths and failings of the human beings who held those empires together (or let them crumble). He projects the power, terror, magnificence, and confidence of imperial monarchy, tracking what they had in common as well as what made some rise to glory and others fail spectacularly, and at what price each destiny was reached. Lieven’s characters—Constantine, Chinggis Khan, Trajan, Suleyman, Hadrian, Louis XIV, Maria Theresa, Peter the Great, Queen Victoria, and dozens more—come alive with color, energy, and detail: their upbringings, their loves, their crucial spouses, their dreadful children. They illustrate how politics and government are a gruelling business: a ruler needed stamina, mental and physical toughness, and self-confidence. He or she needed the sound judgement of problems and people which is partly innate but also the product of education and experience. A good brain was essential for setting priorities, weighing conflicting advice, and matching ends to needs. A diplomatically astute marriage was often even more essential. Emperors (and the rare empresses) could be sacred symbols, warrior kings, political leaders, chief executive officers of the government machine, heads of a family, and impresarios directing the many elements of "soft power" essential to any regime’s survival. What was it like to live and work in such an extraordinary role? What qualities did it take to perform this role successfully? Lieven traces the shifting balance among these elements across eras that encompass a staggering array of events from the rise of the world’s great religions to the scientific revolution, the expansion of European empires across oceans, the great twentieth century conflicts, and the triumph of nationalism over imperialism. The rule of the emperor may be over, but Lieven shows us how we live with its poltical and cultural legacies today.

The fascinating story of the Austrian, German and Russian imperial families during the four years of the First World War and the political and personal struggles that brought about their ruin

The volume collects fourteen essays on Herodian that investigate the most important aspects of his historiography: literature, politics, economy, religion and warfare.

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Best Books of 2023: New Yorker, The Economist, Smithsonian Most Anticipated Books of Fall: Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, TODAY, Literary Hub, and Publishers Weekly "A vivid way to re-examine what we know, and don’t, about life at the top.... Emperor of Rome is a masterly group portrait, an invitation to think skeptically but not contemptuously of a familiar civilization." —Kyle Harper, Wall Street Journal A sweeping account of the social and political world of the Roman emperors by “the world’s most famous classicist” (Guardian). In her international bestseller SPQR, Mary Beard told the thousand-year story of ancient Rome, from its slightly shabby Iron Age origins to its reign as the undisputed hegemon of the Mediterranean. Now, drawing on more than thirty years of teaching and writing about Roman history, Beard turns to the emperors who ruled the Roman Empire, beginning with Julius Caesar (assassinated 44 BCE) and taking us through the nearly three centuries—and some thirty emperors—that separate him from the boy-king Alexander Severus (assassinated 235 CE). Yet Emperor of Rome is not your typical chronological account of Roman rulers, one emperor after another: the mad Caligula, the monster Nero, the philosopher Marcus Aurelius. Instead, Beard asks different, often larger and more probing questions: What power did emperors actually have? Was the Roman palace really so bloodstained? What kind of jokes did Augustus tell? And for that matter, what really happened, for example, between the emperor Hadrian and his beloved Antinous? Effortlessly combining the epic with the quotidian, Beard tracks the emperor down at home, at the races, on his travels, even on his way to heaven. Along the way, Beard explores Roman fictions of imperial power, overturning many of the assumptions that we hold as gospel, not the least of them the perception that emperors one and all were orchestrators of extreme brutality and cruelty. Here Beard introduces us to the emperor’s wives and lovers, rivals and slaves, court jesters and soldiers, and the ordinary people who pressed begging letters into his hand—whose chamber pot disputes were adjudicated by Augustus, and whose budgets were approved by Vespasian, himself the son of a tax collector. With its finely nuanced portrayal of sex, class, and politics, Emperor of Rome goes directly to the heart of Roman fantasies (and our own) about what it was to be Roman at its richest, most luxurious, most extreme, most powerful, and most deadly, offering an account of Roman history as it has never been presented before.

Emperor of the World, traces the curious history of the story of the alliances forged by Charlemagne while visiting Jerusalem and Constantinople, revealing how the memory of the Frankish Emperor was manipulated to shape the institutions of kingship and empire in the High Middle Ages. The legend incorporates apocalyptic themes such as the succession of world monarchies at the End of Days and the prophecy of the Last Roman Emperor. Charlemagne's apocryphal journey to the East increasingly resembled the eschatological final journey of the Last Emperor, who was expected to end his reign in Jerusalem after reuniting the Roman Empire prior to the Last Judgment. Latowsky finds that the writers who incorporated this legend did so to support, or in certain cases to criticize, the imperial pretentions of the regimes under which they wrote. Latowsky removes Charlemagne's encounters with the East from their long-presumed Crusading context and shows how a story that began as a rhetorical commonplace of imperial praise evolved over the centuries as an expression of Christian Roman universalism.

Throughout history, royal dynasties have dominated countries and empires around the world. Kings, queens, emperors, chiefs, pharaohs, czars - whatever title they ruled by, monarchs have shaped institutions, rituals, and cultures in every time period and every corner of the globe. The concept of monarchy originated in prehistoric times and evolved over centuries right up to the present. Efforts to overthrow monarchies or evade their rule - such as the American, French, Chinese, and Russian revolutions - are considered turning points in world history. Even today, many countries retain their monarchies, although in vastly reduced form with little political power. One cannot understand human history and government without understanding monarchs and monarchies. This fully-illustrated encyclopedia provides the first complete survey of all the major rulers and ruling families of the world, past and present. No other reference work approaches the topic with the same sense of magnitude or connection to historical context. Arranged in A-Z format for ease of access, World Monarchies and Dynasties includes information on major monarchs and dynasties from ancient time to the present. This set: includes overviews of reigns and successions, genealogical charts, and dynastic timelines; addresses concepts, problems, and theories of monarchy; provides background and information for further research; highlights important places, structures, symbols, events, and legends related to particular monarchs and dynasties; includes a master bibliography and multiple indexes.

Guy Gavriel Kay, multiple award-winning author of The Fionavar Tapestry and Sailing to Sarantium, completes his magnificent tale of an alternate Byzantine world… In the golden city of Sarantium, a renowned mosaicist seeks to fill his artistic ambitions and his destiny high upon a dome intended to be the emperor’s enduring sanctuary and legacy. The beauty and solitude of Crispin's work cannot protect him from the dangerous intrigues of court and city, swirling with rumors of war and conspiracy, while otherworldly fires mysteriously flicker and disappear in the streets at night. The emperor is plotting a conquest of Crispin’s homeland to regain an empire. And with his fate entwined with that of his royal benefactor, Crispin’s loyalties come with a very high price. And another voyager has come to the imperial city: Rustem of Kerakek, a physician from an eastern desert kingdom, determined to find his own fate amid the shifting, treacherous currents of passion and violence that define Sarantium.

With stunning photographs from the ice edge, this firsthand account of a researcher's time in Antarctica and of the perilous journeys of the world's largest penguin species: the iconic emperor. Nearly all emperor penguin colonies are extremely remote; of the sixty-six known, fewer than thirty have been visited by humans, and even fewer have been the subject of successful research programs. One of the largest known emperor penguin colonies is found on a narrow band of sea ice attached to the Antarctic continent. In Journeys with Emperors, Gerald L. Kooyman and Jim Mastro take us to this far-flung colony in the Ross Sea, revealing how scientists gained access to it, and what they learned while living among the penguins as they raised their chicks. The Ross Sea colony is close to the ice edge, which spares the penguins the long, energy-draining march for which other colonies are well-known. But life at this colony is not without movement. The proximity of the ice edge to the birds allowed researchers to observe the penguins as they came and went on their foraging journeys, including their interactions with leopard seals and killer whales. What the scientists witnessed revealed important aspects of emperor penguin behavior and physiology. For instance, they discovered that in the course of hunting for food, some of the penguins dive to depths of greater than five hundred meters (a third of a mile, deeper than any other diving bird). And crucially: most of the emperor's life is actually spent at sea, with fledged chicks and adults making separate, perilous journeys across icy water--to mature or to feed before they must fast while they molt. When chick nurturing is complete, the fledglings abandon the colony in large groups, heading north to the Southern Ocean. The adults leave at the same time, traveling one thousand kilometers eastward across the Ross Sea to a sea-ice sanctuary for molting. During this journey, they must gain enough weight to survive the month-long molt, when every feather is replaced and the birds cannot enter the water to feed. After the molt, many if not most return to the colony to breed once again. For the males, this means another fast--this time for 120 days as they incubate their eggs. Featuring original color photographs and complemented with online videos, Journeys with Emperors is both an eye-opening overview of the emperor penguin's life and a thrilling tale of scientific discovery in one of the most remote, harsh, and beautiful places on Earth.

The subject of the emperor in the Byzantine world may seem likely to be a well-studied topic but there is no book devoted to the emperor in general covering the span of the Byzantine empire. Of course there are studies on individual emperors, dynasties and aspects of the imperial office/role, but there remains no equivalent to Fergus Millar’s The Emperor in the Roman World (from which the proposed volume takes inspiration for its title and scope). The oddity of a lack of a general study of the Byzantine emperor is compounded by the fact that a series of books devoted to Byzantine empresses was published in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Thus it is appropriate to turn the spotlight on the emperor. Themes covered by the contributions include: questions of dynasty and imperial families; the imperial court and the emperor’s men; imperial duties and the emperor as ruler; imperial literature (the emperor as subject and author); and the material emperor, including imperial images and spaces. The volume fills a need in the field and the market, and also brings new and cutting-edge approaches to the study of the Byzantine emperor. Although the volume cannot hope to be a comprehensive treatment of the emperor in the Byzantine world it aims to cover a broad chronological and thematic span and to play a vital part in setting the agenda for future work. The subject of the Byzantine emperor has also an obvious relevance for historians working on rulership in other cultures and periods.