Bøker av Roger Crowley

As remarkable as Columbus and the conquistador expeditions, the history of Portuguese exploration is now almost forgotten. This title tells an epic tale of navigation, trade and technology, money and religious zealotry, political diplomacy and espionage, sea battles and shipwrecks, endurance, courage and terrifying brutality.

A thrilling history of the dramatic siege of Acre in 1291, the bloody climax to the two hundred years of the Holy Land Crusades

A magisterial work of gripping history, City of Fortune tells the story of the Venetian ascent from lagoon dwellers to the greatest power in the Mediterranean - an epic five hundred year voyage that encompassed crusade and trade, plague, sea battles and colonial adventure. In Venice, the path to empire unfolded in a series of extraordinary contests - the sacking of Constantinople in 1204, the fight to the finish with Genoa and a desperate defence against the Turks. Under the lion banner of St Mark, she created an empire of ports and naval bases which funnelled the goods of the world through its wharfs. In the process the city became the richest place on earth - a brilliant mosaic fashioned from what it bought, traded, borrowed and stole. Based on first hand accounts of trade and warfare, seafaring and piracy and the places where Venetians sailed and died, City of Fortune is narrative history at its finest. Beginning on Ascension Day in the year 1000 and ending with an explosion off the coast of Greece - and the calamitous news that the Portuguese had pioneered a sea route to India - it will fascinate anyone who loves Venice and the Mediterranean world.

In 1521, Suleiman the Magnificent, ruler of the Ottoman Empire at the height of its power, despatched an invasion fleet to the island of Rhodes. This was the opening shot in an epic struggle between rival empires and faiths, and the ensuing battle for control of the Mediterranean would last sixty years. Empires of the Sea tells the story of this great contest. It is a fast-paced tale of spiralling intensity that ranges from Istanbul to the Gates of Gibraltar and features a cast of extraordinary characters: Barbarossa, the pirate who terrified Europe; the risk-taking Emperor Charles V; the Knights of St John, last survivors of the crusading spirit; and the brilliant Christian admiral Don Juan of Austria. Its brutal climax came between 1565 and 1571, six years that witnessed a fight to the finish, decided in a series of bloody set pieces: the epic siege of Malta; the battle for Cyprus; and the apocalyptic last-ditch defence of southern Europe at Lepanto - one of the single most shocking days in world history that fixed the frontiers of the Mediterranean world we know today.Empires of the Sea follows Roger Crowley's first book, the widely praised Constantinople: The Last Great Siege. It is page-turning narrative history at its best - a story of extraordinary colour and incident, rich in detail, full of surprises and backed by a wealth of eyewitness accounts.

The story of the sixteenth-century’s epic contest for the spice trade, which propelled European maritime exploration and conquest across Asia and the Pacific

A gripping exploration of the fall of Constantinople and its connection to the world we live in today.The fall of Constantinople in 1453 signaled a shift in history and the end of the Byzantium Empire. Roger Crowley's readable and comprehensive account of the battle between Mehmet II, sultan of the Ottoman Empire, and Constantine XI, the 57th emperor of Byzantium, illuminates the period in history that was a precursor to the current conflict between the West and the Middle East.

'Engagingly fresh and vivid . . . The 21-year-old Mehmet [the Ottoman Sultan] emerges from this book as ruthless but innovative, irascible but versatile and, above all, indefatigable - a worthy successor to Alexander and the Roman emperors he admired as much as any Muslim hero.' Malise Ruthven, Sunday TimesIn the spring of 1453, the Ottoman Turks advanced on Constantinople in pursuit of an ancient Islamic dream: capturing the thousand-year-old capital of Christian Byzantium. During the siege that followed, a small band of defenders, outnumbered ten to one, confronted the might of the Ottoman army in an epic contest fought on land, sea and underground.'In this account of the 1453 siege, written in crackling prose by former Istanbul resident Roger Crowley - his first book and not, I hope, his last - we are treated to narrative history at its most enthralling.' Christopher Silvester, Daily Express'A vivid and readable account of the siege . . . [And] an excellent traveller's guide to how and why Istanbul became a Muslim city.' Philip Mansel, Guardian