Books by Tom Holland
Rubicon
by Tom Holland
A vivid historical account of the social world of Rome as it moved from republic to empire. In 49 B.C., the seven hundred fifth year since the founding of Rome, Julius Caesar crossed a small border river called the Rubicon and plunged Rome into cataclysmic civil war. Tom Holland’s enthralling account tells the story of Caesar’s generation, witness to the twilight of the Republic and its bloody transformation into an empire. From Cicero, Spartacus, and Brutus, to Cleopatra, Virgil, and Augustus, here are some of the most legendary figures in history brought thrillingly to life. Combining verve and freshness with scrupulous scholarship, Rubicon is not only an engrossing history of this pivotal era but a uniquely resonant portrait of a great civilization in all its extremes of self-sacrifice and rivalry, decadence and catastrophe, intrigue, war, and world-shaking ambition.
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$21.00
Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West
by Tom Holland
In the fifth century B.C., a global superpower was determined to bring truth and order to what it regarded as two terrorist states. The superpower was Persia, incomparably rich in ambition, gold, and men. The terrorist states were Athens and Sparta, eccentric cities in a poor and mountainous backwater: Greece. The story of how their citizens took on the Great King of Persia, and thereby saved not only themselves but Western civilization as well, is as heart-stopping and fateful as any episode in history. Tom Holland’s brilliant study of these critical Persian Wars skillfully examines a conflict of critical importance to both ancient and modern history.
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Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of the House of Caesar
by Tom Holland
In this dazzling portrait of Rome’s first imperial dynasty, Tom Holland traces the astonishing century-long story of the rise and fall of the Julio-Claudians—Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero. Capturing both the brilliant allure of their rule and the blood-steeped shadows cast by their crimes, Dynasty travels from the great capital rebuilt in marble to the dank and barbarian forests of Germany. Populated by a spectacular cast: murderers and metrosexuals, adulterers and Druids, scheming grandmothers and reluctant gladiators, it vividly recreates the world of Rome after Julius Caesar. A tale of rule and ruination, Dynasty is the story of a family that transformed and stupefied the western world and that continues to cast a mesmerizing spell across the millennia.
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Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic 2003 (Hardcover)
by Tom Holland
A masterful, witty, brilliantly researched popular history of perhaps the greatest civilization ever and the events and people that led to its transformation from a republic to an empire.
On a dark January morning, Julius Caesar, the governor of Gaul, rode with his closest aides towards a river named the Rubicon, which marked the line of the frontier with Italy. A governor was forbidden to lead troops out of his allotted province – to break this severest of laws was tantamount to a declaration of civil war. Caesar was a gambler, however. Like the consummate actor on the public stage he had always been, he quoted a line from one of Menander's plays: "It's time to roll the die." Then he ordered the legion behind him to advance, over the river and on towards Rome. Crossing the Rubicon was a step so consequential that it has come to stand for every fateful step in history since. When Caesar rolled his die, the result was indeed a civil war, one that would end up destroying Rome's traditional freedoms and establishing a permanent dictatorship on the wreckage of her constitution.
In Rubicon, Cambridge- and Oxford-educated historian and novelist Tom Holland gives us a harrowing and exciting account of the fall of the Republic, one that begins in 100 BC, the approximate birthdate of the generation that was to bring about the Republic's ruin. He then traces the development of these men into the ruling minds of the Republic, and the occurrence at the Rubicon that marked the end of the expansionism for which they had fought. Rubicon captures the suspense and drama of Rome's most famous political rivalries and shows its vibrant and charged atmosphere, all the while featuring some of the most celebrated personalities in history–Julius Caesar, Cicero, Spartacus, Cleopatra, Brutus, Pompey, Virgil, and Augustus. As America embarks on its own imperial adventures, Rubicon is the chronicle of Rome for which we have all been waiting–carefully researched and wildly compelling.
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The Forge of Christendom: The End of Days and the Epic Rise of the West
by Tom Holland
In AD 900, few would have guessed that the splintering kingdoms of Christendom were candidates for future greatness. Hemmed in by implacable enemies on three sides, and by ocean on the fourth, it seemed that the Christian people had nowhere to turn. Indeed, there were many who feared—cast in the Millennium’s shadow—that they were nearing the time when the Antichrist would appear, drowning the world in blood and heralding its end.
But the Antichrist did not appear, and Christendom did not collapse. Instead, forged from the convulsions of those terrible times, there emerged a new civilization as the Christian people set to the heroic task of building a Jerusalem on earth themselves. With an epic sweep that transports us from the crucifixion to the First Crusade, and from the glitter of Constantinople to the bleak shores of Canada, Tom Holland’s The Forge of Christendom is a brilliant study of a truly fateful revolution: the emergence of Western Europe for the first time as a distinctive and expansionist power.
It was the age of Otto the Great and William the Conqueror, of Caliphs and Viking sea-kings, of hermits, monks, and serfs. It witnessed the spread of castles, the invention of knighthood, and the founding of a papal monarchy. Above all, it brought people to fear that the end days might be at hand, and yet also—with an effort so prodigious that it has the power to move us still—to invent themselves anew.
A momentous achievement: for this was nothing less than the founding of the modern West. It is an epic story that Tom Holland renders with the narrative skill and wide-angled scope of a novelist and the careful scholarship a historian. It will transform its readers’ conception of the origins of the Modern West.
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The Forge of Christendom: The End of Days and the Epic Rise of the West
by Tom Holland
A grand narrative history of the re-emergence of Europe following the collapse of the Roman Empire. At the approach of the first millennium, the Christians of Europe did not seem likely candidates for future greatness. Weak, fractured, and hemmed in by hostile nations, they saw no future beyond the widely anticipated Second Coming of Christ. But when the world did not end, the peoples of Western Europe suddenly found themselves with no choice but to begin the heroic task of building a Jerusalem on earth.
In The Forge of Christendom, Tom Holland masterfully describes this remarkable new age, a time of caliphs and Viking sea kings, the spread of castles and the invention of knighthood. It was one of the most significant departure points in history: the emergence of Western Europe as a distinctive and expansionist power.
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Pax: War and Peace in Rome’s Golden Age
by Tom Holland
From a “remarkably gifted historian” (New York Times), the definitive account of the golden age of Rome -- an ultimate superpower at the pinnacle of its greatness
The Pax Romana has long been shorthand for the empire’s golden age. Stretching from Caledonia to Arabia, Rome ruled over a quarter of the world’s population. It was the wealthiest and most formidable state in the history of humankind.
Pax is a captivating narrative history of Rome at the height of its power. From the gilded capital to realms beyond the frontier, historian Tom Holland shows ancient Rome in all its glory: Nero’s downfall, the destruction of Jerusalem and Pompeii, the building of the Colosseum and Hadrian’s Wall, the conquests of Trajan. Vividly sketching the lives of Romans both ordinary and spectacular, from slaves to emperors, Holland shows that Roman peace was the fruit of unprecedented military violence.
A stunning portrait of Rome’s glory days, this is the epic history of the Pax Romana.
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$32.50
Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World
by Tom Holland
A "marvelous" (Economist) account of how the Christian Revolution forged the Western imagination.
Crucifixion, the Romans believed, was the worst fate imaginable, a punishment reserved for slaves. How astonishing it was, then, that people should have come to believe that one particular victim of crucifixion-an obscure provincial by the name of Jesus-was to be worshipped as a god. Dominion explores the implications of this shocking conviction as they have reverberated throughout history. Today, the West remains utterly saturated by Christian assumptions. As Tom Holland demonstrates, our morals and ethics are not universal but are instead the fruits of a very distinctive civilization. Concepts such as secularism, liberalism, science, and homosexuality are deeply rooted in a Christian seedbed. From Babylon to the Beatles, Saint Michael to #MeToo, Dominion tells the story of how Christianity transformed the modern world.
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In the Shadow of the Sword: The Birth of Islam and the Rise of the Global Arab Empire
by Tom Holland
The acclaimed author of Rubicon and other superb works of popular history now produces a thrillingly panoramic (and incredibly timely) account of the rise of Islam. No less significant than the collapse of the Roman Republic or the Persian invasion of Greece, the evolution of the Arab empire is one of the supreme narratives of ancient history, a story dazzlingly rich in drama, character, and achievement. Just like the Romans, the Arabs came from nowhere to carve out a stupefyingly vast dominionexcept that they achieved their conquests not over the course of centuries as the Romans did but in a matter of decades. Just like the Greeks during the Persian wars, they overcame seemingly insuperable odds to emerge triumphant against the greatest empire of the daynot by standing on the defensive, however, but by hurling themselves against all who lay in their path.
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In the Shadow of the Sword: The Birth of Islam and the Rise of the Global Arab Empire
by Tom Holland
A thrillingly panoramic and incredibly timely account of the rise of Islam, from the acclaimed author of Rubicon and Persian Fire.
The evolution of the Arab empire is one of the supreme narratives of ancient history, a story dazzlingly rich in drama, character, and achievement. In this exciting and sweeping history—the third in his trilogy of books on the ancient world—Holland describes how the Arabs emerged to carve out a stupefyingly vast dominion in a matter of decades, overcoming seemingly insuperable odds to create an imperial civilization aspects of which endure to the present day. With profound bearing on the most consequential events of our time, Holland ties the exciting story of Islam’s ascent to the crises and controversies of the present.
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Dominion
by Tom Holland, C.J. Sansom, Bentley Little
His attempts at fitting in at a new school complicated by disturbing dreams, Dion Semele befriends Penelope Daneam, an orphan who has been raised by nuns, and the two become catalysts for a reign of incredible terror. Reissue.
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Dominion
by Tom Holland, C.J. Sansom, Bentley Little
C.J. Sansom rewrites history in a thrilling novel that dares to imagine Britain under the thumb of Nazi Germany.
1952. Twelve years have passed since Churchill lost to the appeasers and Britain surrendered to Nazi Germany. The global economy strains against the weight of the long German war against Russia still raging in the east. The British people find themselves under increasingly authoritarian rule -- the press, radio, and television tightly controlled, the British Jews facing ever greater constraints.
But Churchill's Resistance soldiers on. As defiance grows, whispers circulate of a secret that could forever alter the balance of the global struggle. The keeper of that secret? Scientist Frank Muncaster, who languishes in a Birmingham mental hospital.
Civil Servant David Fitzgerald, a spy for the Resistance and University friend of Frank's, is given the mission to rescue Frank and get him out of the country. Hard on his heels is Gestapo agent Gunther Hoth, a brilliant, implacable hunter of men, who soon has Frank and David's innocent wife, Sarah, directly in his sights.
C.J. Sansom's literary thriller Winter in Madrid earned Sansom comparisons to Graham Greene, Sebastian Faulks, and Ernest Hemingway. Now, in his first alternative history epic, Sansom doesn't just recreate the past -- he reinvents it. In a spellbinding tale of suspense, oppression and poignant love, Dominion dares to explore how, in moments of crisis, history can turn on the decisions of a few brave men and women -- the secrets they choose to keep and the bonds they share.
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No copies available.
Dominion
by Tom Holland, C.J. Sansom, Bentley Little
A "marvelous" (Economist) account of how the Christian Revolution forged the Western imagination.
Crucifixion, the Romans believed, was the worst fate imaginable, a punishment reserved for slaves. How astonishing it was, then, that people should have come to believe that one particular victim of crucifixion -- an obscure provincial by the name of Jesus -- was to be worshipped as a god. Dominion explores the implications of this shocking conviction as they have reverberated throughout history. Today, the West remains utterly saturated by Christian assumptions. As Tom Holland demonstrates, our morals and ethics are not universal but are instead the fruits of a very distinctive civilization. Concepts such as secularism, liberalism, science, and homosexuality are deeply rooted in a Christian seedbed. From Babylon to the Beatles, Saint Michael to #MeToo, Dominion tells the story of how Christianity transformed the modern world.
Copies
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$22.99
Copies
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$21.99
Dynasty The Rise and Fall of the House of Caesar
by Tom Holland
Author and historian Tom Holland returns to his roots in Roman history and the audience he cultivated with Rubicon--his masterful, witty, brilliantly researched popular history of the fall of the Roman republic--with Dynasty, a luridly fascinating history of the reign of the first five Roman emperors.
Dynasty continues Rubicon's story, opening where that book ended: with the murder of Julius Caesar. This is the period of the first and perhaps greatest Roman Emperors and it's a colorful story of rule and ruination, running from the rise of Augustus through to the death of Nero. Holland's expansive history also has distinct shades of I Claudius, with five wonderfully vivid (and in three cases, thoroughly depraved) Emperors--Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero--featured, along with numerous fascinating secondary characters. Intrigue, murder, naked ambition and treachery, greed, gluttony, lust, incest, pageantry, decadence--the tale of these five Caesars continues to cast a mesmerizing spell across the millennia.
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The Wolf-Girl, the Greeks, and the Gods: A Tale of the Persian Wars
by Tom Holland
The magic of mythology meets the grit of history in a blazing blockbuster retelling of the Persian Wars from award-winning author Tom Holland, lavishly illustrated by Jason Cockcroft.
I come to tell you a story. A story unlike any that has been told before.
The Trojan War is ancient history. The gods of Olympus are silent and have not appeared to mortals for generations. In the city-state of Sparta, young Gorgo's mother gives a warning with her dying breath: the Persians are coming. The princess Gorgo, weaned on her nurse's stories of gods and shapeshifters, never forgets her mother's last words. When at last the drums of war begin to sound, she is swept up in a dangerous game of politics, treachery, and vengeance. With the blood of Herakles and Zeus himself running through her veins and the awakening of a dormant supernatural power, Gorgo, now queen of Sparta, must help lead her city-state against a mighty empire. Unraveling like prophecy and featuring stunning art from acclaimed illustrator Jason Cockcroft, Tom Holland's dramatic reimagining of one of history's most formidable wars will echo through the mind of the reader long after they have reached the final page.
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