Accursed Tower

Download or read book Accursed Tower written by Roger Crowley and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2019-11-19 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The city of Acre, powerfully fortified and richly provisioned, was the last crusader stronghold. When it fell in 1291, two hundred years of Christian crusading in the Holy Land came to a bloody end. With his customary narrative brilliance and immediacy, Roger Crowley chronicles the tumultuous and violent attack on Acre, the heaviest bombardment before the age of gunpowder, which left this once great Mediterranean city a crumbling ruin.The ‘Accursed Tower’ was the focal point of this siege. As the last garrison of the Crusader defences, it came to symbolise the disintegration of the old world and the rise of a new era of Islamic jihad. Crowley’s narrative is based on forensic research, drawing heavily on little known first hand sources, both Christian and Arabic. This is a fast-paced and gripping account of a pivotal moment in world history.

Download or read book A World Lit Only by Fire written by William Manchester and published by Back Bay Books. This book was released on 2009-09-26 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A "lively and engaging" history of the Middle Ages (Dallas Morning News) from the acclaimed historian William Manchester, author of The Last Lion. From tales of chivalrous knights to the barbarity of trial by ordeal, no era has been a greater source of awe, horror, and wonder than the Middle Ages. In handsomely crafted prose, and with the grace and authority of his extraordinary gift for narrative history, William Manchester leads us from a civilization tottering on the brink of collapse to the grandeur of its rebirth: the dense explosion of energy that spawned some of history's greatest poets, philosophers, painters, adventurers, and reformers, as well as some of its most spectacular villains. "Manchester provides easy access to a fascinating age when our modern mentality was just being born." --Chicago Tribune

Download or read book The Field of Blood written by Nicholas Morton and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2018-02-20 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of the 1119 Battle of the Field of Blood, which decisively halted the momentum gained during the First Crusade and decided the fate of the Crusader states During the First Crusade, Frankish armies swept across the Middle East, capturing major cities and setting up the Crusader States in the Levant. A sustained Western conquest of the region appeared utterly inevitable. Why, then, did the crusades ultimately fail? To answer this question, historian Nicholas Morton focuses on a period of bitter conflict between the Franks and their Turkish enemies, when both factions were locked in a struggle for supremacy over the city of Aleppo. For the Franks, Aleppo was key to securing dominance over the entire region. For the Turks, this was nothing less than a battle for survival -- without Aleppo they would have little hope of ever repelling the European invaders. This conflict came to a head at the Battle of the Field of Blood in 1199, and the face of the Middle East was forever changed.

Download or read book City of Fortune written by Roger Crowley and published by Random House. This book was released on 2012-01-24 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The rise and fall of Venice’s empire is an irresistible story and [Roger] Crowley, with his rousing descriptive gifts and scholarly attention to detail, is its perfect chronicler.”—The Financial Times The New York Times bestselling author of Empires of the Sea charts Venice’s astounding five-hundred-year voyage to the pinnacle of power in an epic story that stands unrivaled for drama, intrigue, and sheer opulent majesty. City of Fortune traces the full arc of the Venetian imperial saga, from the ill-fated Fourth Crusade, which culminates in the sacking of Constantinople in 1204, to the Ottoman-Venetian War of 1499–1503, which sees the Ottoman Turks supplant the Venetians as the preeminent naval power in the Mediterranean. In between are three centuries of Venetian maritime dominance, during which a tiny city of “lagoon dwellers” grow into the richest place on earth. Drawing on firsthand accounts of pitched sea battles, skillful negotiations, and diplomatic maneuvers, Crowley paints a vivid picture of this avaricious, enterprising people and the bountiful lands that came under their dominion. From the opening of the spice routes to the clash between Christianity and Islam, Venice played a leading role in the defining conflicts of its time—the reverberations of which are still being felt today. “[Crowley] writes with a racy briskness that lifts sea battles and sieges off the page.”—The New York Times “Crowley chronicles the peak of Venice’s past glory with Wordsworthian sympathy, supplemented by impressive learning and infectious enthusiasm.”—The Wall Street Journal

Download or read book Empires of the Sea written by Roger Crowley and published by Random House. This book was released on 2008-07-01 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1521, Suleiman the Magnificent, Muslim ruler of the Ottoman Empire at the height of its power, dispatched an invasion fleet to the Christian island of Rhodes. This would prove to be the opening shot in an epic struggle between rival empires and faiths for control of the Mediterranean and the center of the world. In Empires of the Sea, acclaimed historian Roger Crowley has written his most mesmerizing work to date–a thrilling account of this brutal decades-long battle between Christendom and Islam for the soul of Europe, a fast-paced tale of spiraling intensity that ranges from Istanbul to the Gates of Gibraltar and features a cast of extraordinary characters: Barbarossa, “The King of Evil,” the pirate who terrified Europe; the risk-taking Emperor Charles V; the Knights of St. John, the last crusading order after the passing of the Templars; the messianic Pope Pius V; and the brilliant Christian admiral Don Juan of Austria. This struggle’s brutal climax came between 1565 and 1571, seven years that witnessed a fight to the finish decided in a series of bloody set pieces: the epic siege of Malta, in which a tiny band of Christian defenders defied the might of the Ottoman army; the savage battle for Cyprus; and the apocalyptic last-ditch defense of southern Europe at Lepanto–one of the single most shocking days in world history. At the close of this cataclysmic naval encounter, the carnage was so great that the victors could barely sail away “because of the countless corpses floating in the sea.” Lepanto fixed the frontiers of the Mediterranean world that we know today. Roger Crowley conjures up a wild cast of pirates, crusaders, and religious warriors struggling for supremacy and survival in a tale of slavery and galley warfare, desperate bravery and utter brutality, technology and Inca gold. Empires of the Sea is page-turning narrative history at its best–a story of extraordinary color and incident, rich in detail, full of surprises, and backed by a wealth of eyewitness accounts. It provides a crucial context for our own clash of civilizations.

Download or read book The Accursed Inheritance of Henrietta Achilles written by Haiko Hörnig and published by Graphic Universe& 8482. This book was released on 2020 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The life of Henrietta Achilles is about to change. After years of living as an orphan, she receives a summons to the strange town of Malrenard. To her surprise, she's the only living relative of Ornun Zol--a notorious wizard, now deceased, who leaves Henrietta with his house and everything in it. With Ornun Zol gone, escaped creatures and misfired curses have been spilling out into Malrenard. If that's not enough, Henrietta will discover countless squabbling squatters inside her uncle's abode: soldiers, bandits, tiny monsters, and more. Then there's the matter of the strange black cat following Henrietta around . . .

Download or read book The Accursed written by Joyce Carol Oates and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2013-03-05 with total page 540 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Joyce Carol Oates has written what may be the world’s finest postmodern Gothic novel: E.L. Doctorow’s Ragtime set in Dracula’s castle. It’s dense, challenging, problematic, horrifying, funny, prolix and full of crazy people. You should read it.” —Stephen King, New York Times Book Review Princeton, New Jersey at the turn of the 20th century: a tranquil place to raise a family, a genteel town for genteel souls. But something dark and dangerous lurks at the edges of the town, corrupting and infecting its residents. Vampires and ghosts haunt the dreams of the innocent. A powerful curse besets the elite families of Princeton—their daughters begin disappearing. A young bride on the verge of the altar is seduced and abducted by a dangerously compelling man—a shape-shifting, vaguely European prince who might just be the devil, and who spreads his curse upon a richly deserving community of white Anglo-Saxon privilege. And in the Pine Barrens that border the town, a lush and terrifying underworld opens up. When the bride’s brother sets out against all odds to find her, his path will cross those of Princeton’s most formidable people, from Grover Cleveland, fresh out of his second term in the White House and retired to town for a quieter life, to soon-to-be commander in chief Woodrow Wilson, president of the University, and a complex individual obsessed to the point of madness with his need to retain power; from the young Socialist idealist Upton Sinclair, to his charismatic comrade Jack London, and the most famous writer of the era, Samuel Clemens/ Mark Twain—all plagued by “accursed” visions. Narrated with Oates's unmistakable psychological insight, The Accursed combines beautifully transporting historical detail with chilling supernatural elements to stunning effect.