The author makes the point that in this abridgement he has adhered to Gibbon's style, format, planning, and footnotes, and has made only selective exclusions. The history covers the centuries from Marcus Aurelius to the capture of Constantinople, and concludes with an epilogue dealing with medieval Rome and the dawn of the Renaissance.

"During their one-thousand-year reign, the Byzantines transformed Christianity, protected Europe from would-be invaders, and later carried the seeds of the Renaissance to Italy."--

From the New York Times–bestselling “standard-bearer for alternate history”: A spy takes on the enemies of the Byzantine Empire (USA Today).
In another, very different timeline—one in which Mohammed embraced Christianity and Islam never came to be—the Byzantine Empire still flourishes in the fourteenth century, and wondrous technologies are emerging earlier than they did in our own.
Having...

The once common idea that the lights went out on classical and Western civilization when Rome fell in 476 C.E. has long since been debunked, but Brownsworth weighs in to illustrate that the Roman Empire's center of power simply shifted to Constantinople. In a narrative by turns spellbinding and prosaic, Brownsworth marches us through centuries of history, beginning long before the fall of Rome, and introduces the successive rulers of Byzantium, from...

In the second half of the tenth century, Byzantium embarked on a series of spectacular conquests. By the early eleventh century, the empire was the most powerful state in the Mediterranean. Yet this imperial project came to a crashing collapse fifty years later, when political disunity, fiscal mismanagement, and defeat at the hands of the Seljuks and the Normans brought an end to Byzantine hegemony. By 1081, Byzantium's very existence was threatened. How...

The Emperor Justinian reunified Rome's fractured empire by defeating the Goths and Vandals who had separated Italy, Spain, and North Africa from imperial rule. At his capital in Constantinople, he built the world's most beautiful building, married its most powerful empress, and wrote its most enduring legal code, seemingly restoring Rome's fortunes for the next 500 years. Then, in the summer of 542, he encountered a flea. The ensuing outbreak of bubonic...

Johnny Dixon and Professor Childermass discover a trolley which transports them back to Constantinople in 1453 as the Turks are invading the Byzantine Empire.

"In a true voyage of discovery, Richard Fidler and his son, Joe, make a journey to Istanbul. Fired by Richard's passion for the rich history of the dazzling Byzantine Empire--centered around the legendary Constantinople--we are swept into some of the most extraordinary tales in history. The clash of civilizations, the fall of empires, the rise of Christianity, revenge lust, murder."--Jacket flap.

"As the daughter of a prominent judge of Khazaria, twelve-year-old Ziva is expected to focus on learning etiquette and decorum in hopes of finding a good husband. But she doesn't care about any of that. Instead, she spends her days with her twin brother, Pesah, as they work to try to find a cure for his leprosy. Now Pesah's getting worse. The best doctors have given him mere weeks to live, and even more alarming, Pesah has a vision: the Angel of Death...

Rear Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd, Jr., USN (1888-1957) was an American naval officer who specialized in feats of exploration. He was a recipient of the Medal of Honor, the highest honor for valor given by the United States and was a pioneering American aviator, polar explorer, and organizer of polar logistics. Aircraft flights, in which he served as a navigator and expedition leader, crossed the Atlantic Ocean, a segment of the Arctic Ocean, and a...