2 Books by Tom Holland Requirements: ePUB, MOBI Reader, 17.8Mb, Version(s): Retail Overview: Historian Tom Holland is the author of the works of history Rubicon, P ersian Fire, and The Forge of Christendom. He reviews regularly for the Times Li terary Supplement (TLS), and has adapted Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides, and Virgi l for BBC Radio. Rubicon was short-listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize and won t he 2004 Hessell-Tiltman Prize for History. Persian Fire won the Anglo-Hellenic L eague eagues 2006 Runciman Award. Genre: Non-Fiction, History
1) Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic (2003): The Roman Repu blic was the most remarkable state in history. What began as a small community o f peasants camped among marshes and hills ended up ruling the known world. Rubic on paints a vivid portrait of the Republic at the climax of its greatness - the same greatness that would herald the catastrophe of its fall. It is a story of i ncomparable drama. This was the century of Julius Caesar, the gambler whose addi ction to glory led him to the banks of the Rubicon, and beyond; of Cicero, whose defence of freedom would make him a byword for eloquence; of Spartacus, the sla ve who dared to challenge a superpower; of Cleopatra, the queen who did the same . Tom Holland brings to life this strange and unsettling civilization, with its ex tremes of ambition and self-sacrifice, bloodshed and desire. Yet alien as it was , the Republic still holds up a mirror to us. Its citizens were obsessed by cele brity chefs, all-night dancing, and exotic pets; they fought elections in law co urts and were addicted to spin; they toppled foreign tyrants in the name of self -defence. Two thousand years might have passed, but we remain the Romans' heirs. "This is the best one-volume narrative history of the Rome between King Tarquin and Emperor Augustus I have ever read. The story of Rome's experiment with repub licanism - peopled by such giants as Caesar, Pompey, Cato and Cicero - is told w ith perfect fire." --Andrew Roberts 2) In the Shadow of the Sword: The Birth of Islam and the Rise of the Global Ara b Empire (2012): The acclaimed author of Rubicon and other superb works of popul ar 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 invas ion 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 achievemen t. Just like the Romans, the Arabs came from nowhere to carve out a stupefyingly vast dominion except 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 dur ing the Persian wars, they overcame seemingly insuperable odds to emerge triumph ant against the greatest empire of the day not by standing on the defensive, how ever, but by hurling themselves against all who lay in their path. "Those unwilling to struggle through academic texts have long needed a guide to the story of Islam as it's understood by those with the fullest access to the la test linguistic and archaeological evidence. Now at last in Tom Holland's In the Shadow of the Sword, they finally have it. Holland is about as exciting a styli st as we have writing history today. [This book is] accessible but delightful .. . as fun to read as any thriller, and with far richer intellectual nutritional c ontent." David Frum
