Lords of the Sea: The Epic Story of the Athenian Navy & the Birth of Democracy
10 best books like Lords of the Sea: The Epic Story of the Athenian Navy & the Birth of Democracy (John R. Hale): Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West, The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt: The History of a Civilisation from 3000 BC to Cleopatra, Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization, Empires of the Sea: The Final Battle for the Mediterranean, 1521-1580, Ghost on the Throne: The Death of Alexander the Great and the War for Crown and Empire, The Peloponnesian War, A War Like No Other: How the Athenians & Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War, The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome's Deadliest Enemy, Alexander the Great, The Ghosts of Cannae: Hannibal & the Darkest Hour of the Roman Republic
Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West
| Author | Tom Holland |
| ISBN | 0385513119 |
In 480 B.C., Xerxes, the King of Persia, led an invasion of mainland Greece. Its success should have been a formality. For seventy years, victory—rapid, spectacular victory—had seemed the birthright of the Persian Empire. In the space of a single generation, they had swept across the Near East,...
The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt: The History of a Civilisation from 3000 BC to Cleopatra
| Author | Toby Wilkinson |
| ISBN | 0747599491 |
I have to say, I really enjoyed this book. My professor may have derisively called it "popular history", but I still love this book.
From first picking it up, it became hard every time I had to put it down. The combination of fluid, easy writing and the fact that this book is packed to the rafters...
Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization
| Author | Lars Brownworth |
| ISBN | 0307407950 |
In AD 476 the Roman Empire fell–or rather, its western half did. Its eastern half, which would come to be known as the Byzantine Empire, would endure and often flourish for another eleven centuries. Though its capital would move to Constantinople, its citizens referred to themselves as Roman for...
Empires of the Sea: The Final Battle for the Mediterranean, 1521-1580
| Author | Roger Crowley |
| ISBN | 0571232302 |
Cervantes, of the "Don Quixote" fame, was in one of these battles. He was a 24-year-old volunteer.
Now I know that hundreds of years ago the Mediterranean Sea and its surrounding land areas were considered the center of the world and were a battleground for two great conflicting forces: the...
| Author | James Romm |
| ISBN | 0307271641 |
Alexander the Great, perhaps the most commanding leader in history, united his empire and his army by the titanic force of his will. His death at the age of thirty-two spelled the end of that unity.
The story of Alexander's conquest of the Persian empire is known to many readers, but the dramatic...
| Author | Donald Kagan |
| ISBN | 0142004375 |
For three decades in the fifth century B.C. the ancient world was torn apart by a conflict that was as dramatic, divisive, and destructive as the world wars of the twentieth century: the Peloponnesian War. Donald Kagan, one of the world’s most respected classical, political, and military historians,...
| Author | Victor Davis Hanson |
| ISBN | 0812969707 |
Provocative military historian Victor Davis Hanson has given painstakingly researched & pathbreaking accounts of wars ranging from classical antiquity to the 21st century. Now he juxtaposes an ancient conflict with modern concerns to create his most engrossing work to date, A War Like No Other....
| Author | Adrienne Mayor |
| ISBN | 0691126836 |
Machiavelli praised his military genius. European royalty sought out his secret elixir against poison. His life inspired Mozart's first opera, while for centuries poets and playwrights recited bloody, romantic tales of his victories, defeats, intrigues, concubines, and mysterious death....
| Author | Philip Freeman |
| ISBN | 1416592806 |
In the first authoritative biography of Alexander the Great written for a general audience in a generation, classicist and historian Philip Freeman tells the remarkable life of the great conqueror. The celebrated Macedonian king has been one of the most enduring figures in history. He was a general...
| Author | Robert L. O'Connell |
| ISBN | 1400067022 |
A stirring account of the most influential battle in history: For millennia, Carthage's triumph over Rome at Cannae in 216 BCE has inspired reverent awe. It was the battle that countless armies tried to imitate, most notably in World Wars I & II, the battle that obsessed military minds. Yet no general...
| Author | Richard Miles |
| ISBN | 0670022667 |
An epic history of a doomed civilization and a lost empire.
The devastating struggle to the death between the Carthaginians and the Romans was one of the defining dramas of the ancient world. In an epic series of land and sea battles, both sides came close to victory before the Carthaginians...
| Author | Adrian Goldsworthy |
| ISBN | 0304352845 |
An impressive new historian of Roman warfare--highly praised by John Keegan--has written a thoroughly engrossing account of the greatest conflict of antiquity. It will grab the attention of military buffs and general readers alike. The struggle for supremacy between Rome and Carthage encompassed...
| Author | Barry S. Strauss |
| ISBN | 0743244516 |
On a late September day in 480 B.C., Greek warships faced an invading Persian armada in the narrow Salamis Straits in the most important naval battle of the ancient world. Overwhelmingly outnumbered by the enemy, the Greeks triumphed through a combination of strategy and deception. More than two millennia...
