Dense and overall disappointing book.
Gave up halfway. His homophobic comments ( he attributes the death and frailty of a certain emperor to his "homosexual excesses")and overall stance of "West= civilization / East= regression and barbarity" are outdated and stink of Orientalism. Such books should not be in circulation. Won't be reading any of his other books for sure.

I actually felt a sense of sadness as I reached the end of this book. Not a victim of a plot surprise, having been to Istanbul, I had an understanding of the cities ultimate destiny with Mehmet as I moved up through the centuries in the book.
It is always a good sign of a book which engages you emotions as well as your mind.

I was surprised by lots of things in the book. It really is appalling how western focused our histories are . I hadn't really realised how much history Byzantium had. I somehow thought it had remained more stable for much longer periods. Instead it was incredibly badly served by its leaders and people many times. It was fortunate to have several periods where enlightened leadership did make a difference.
But if nothing else this book is a reminder that the vast majority of people through history will only take the right track when all other options are exhausted, if they are fortunate enough to have that time.
Choosing charismatic idiots to lead was and is the bane of any civilization .

Norwich is a true pro. A few years back he published a phenomenal book on the Mediterranean. This book here is a "condensed" version of his massive 3 volume history of Rome's red-headed stepchild. There's much less than one would expect on Byzantium's famed art here, as well as on the life of its ordinary citizens. Instead, the book reads like an 1100 year litany of regicides, fratricides, matricides, infanticides, tyrannicdes, vivicides, prolicides, and even deicdies, and whatever else could get the next guy into the thrown.
Worth reading if only for the advertures of Belisarius.

Absolutely fantastic book. Very informative, well detailed, witty and humourous at times. But most of all, it is incredibly entertaining, never a dull moment. Everything I wanted and much more. Perfect for anyone interested in Byzantium or just history in general.

This is an incredible, epic, history. I knew very little about the Eastern Roman Empire when I decided to read it, and consequently this book was rather like drinking from a firehose. 1100 years of some of the most staggering and implausible history you've ever read condensed into 383 pages, finishing off with a heroic last stand and the legends it inspired.

I don't mean this to be the end of my acquaintance with Byzantium, but it was an electrifying introduction.

The Byzantines didn't screw around, and subsequently, many of their emperors did not expire peacefully in bed after a long life. In the end though, at least in this narrative, they come out looking better than the Western Chrsitian empires, of whom all were too busy greedily intriguing to save the East from Muslim conquest. Great book; would recommend to anyone who likes history in any capacity

Wow they sure did a lot of gouging out of eyes and tongues and noses and throwing people off cliffs! Everyone is all, hey this new emperor will be great I bet we won't have to murder him with poisoned mulberries or whack him with a soap dish or behead him. Then the poor little lamb takes power, has some good ideas, but reverts to insanity as quickly as he can and someone races to get the perennially-useful soapdish and cheerfully start anew. What years of glee! And when they weren't having those fun times they were running rampant through the streets beating each other up about obscure theological issues and hiding ikons under their cloaks and excommunicating one another. So, basically... I loved it.

I've had a long fascination with Byzantine history and came into this book expecting a short overview of this enigmatic empire.

How can you compress over a thousand years of history? That too a history that is indelibly linked with almost all of Europe and West Asia for all nearly a millennium. I'll be honest that John Julius Norwich doesn't do a smashing job, but a credible job that'll only be a stepping stone for it's readers to go out and explore the Byzantines.

Norwich isn't a historian, and doesn't make any pretensions about it. He's a British ex-diplomat who decided to write about a people he must have read up a lot on (his other works are based on the Norman Sicilian dynasty and a history of Venice). His lack of training and prejudices show up in some places.

A Short of History of Byzantium is an abridged version of his three-part History of Byzantium. I'll be honest and say in no way I felt this book to be an abridgment. It was a dry history throughout.

The book is a list of one Emperor's (and Empress') short biography after another. I think he's covered every single one of them! An achievement I'd think considering there were dozens of them covering a millennium. For people who like this kind of stuff (like me, who like keeping handy lists and wouldn't mind knowing the chronology and genealogy of these Emperors) this book will be easy to read. For others, tough luck.

There is next to nothing about the Byzantine economy, their culture (just fleeting mentions are made of the Byzantine obsession over theology, and repercussions such as the 5th Century Iconoclasm) and their art though is somewhat better treated. You'll not come away knowing why the Byzantines never adopted feudalism in the Western European sense (a question I've always wondered about). It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say the book is completely centred around Constantinople. Even though so much of early Byzantium depended on Egypt, and later on: Anatolia and the Balkans, these regions are given very short shrift. You won't come away knowing anything about Byzantine war strategies (they were famed warriors for much of the Middle Ages and the cataphract, their armoured and mounted warriors might have inspired the European knight of the Later Middle Ages) even though much of the book is detailing the exploits, and defeats, of these Emperors, many of them army commanders.

So if you would like to know who Constantine's successor was, or who built the famous Constantinople Triple Walls, or just why the "Queen of Cities" ended up being captured in 1204 CE by Crusaders, this book is for you. If you cannot tolerate boring school-boyish history where names are repeated, stay away from it.

Also, I don't think you'll need to read the 3-part books at all, I certainly won't. This is a good enough introduction. Now to find a book written by a historian.

When Constantine established Constantinople as his new Christian capital he set in motion something that would eventually lead to the Roman Empire splitting into eastern and western halves ; the west would fall in 467 AD and the East, Byzatium would last a thousand years longer. The split also meant that Christianity split into Catholic and Orthodox: many theological spats followed before a final schism in 1054. Though there were religious reconciliations along the way, geopolitics were against them. Towards the end reconciliation again became desirable as Byzantium was eaten at by bigger fish: but not to be. Pope and patriach could not agree. Finally ravaged by Franks, the empire felt ravished by Western Christians and finally abandoned as it fell to Islam. It had long been a bulwark between middle east and west......

Along the way came the Christianisation of Russia: Russia was swayed by Byzatium's opulent beauty. It had poised between Christianity and Islam and a sadly aprocryphal story says that Islam's ban on alcohol was what swayed Russia to Christinaity.

This is a condensed version of a larger three volume history that whets my appteite for the longer version. There is much of what we associate with Roman history-the tussles for the throne- but much positivity too.

En poco más de cuatrocientas páginas Norwich resume más de mil años de una de las civilizaciones más injustamente poco reconocidas de la historia. Y lo hace de manera amena, accesible y, sobre todo, muy entretenida.

This is a shortened version of the author's longer book on Byzantium. What a bore - it's just a list of emperors, who they were married to, and when they died. Not recommended.

It is somewhat sad that (thanks in large part to Gibbon) the educated classes of the West are largely ignorant of the history of Byzantium, disregarding it with a certain amount of contempt. And yet, for the unlikeliest of reasons, a chip has been made in that edifice of ignorance. If I told an educated person of a generation above me that I was reading a book about Byzantium, they would say that they knew nothing of it or even (bizarrely enough) that they have never heard of it. On the other hand, I can tell the same thing to someone of my generation (OK, it has to be a bloke of a certain type), and after they have drawn an initial blank, I can prompt them with, 'You know, the Byzantines in Age of Empires II?' - 'Oh yeah! The Byzantines! They could get, like, every technology! And they had cataphracts, they were awesome!'

Admittedly, that tends to be about the limit of their historical knowledge, but at least it's a start.

It is this ignorance that John Julius Norwich has set out to destroy. He makes no pretence to scholarship, and is very much an old-fashioned historiographer after the fashion of Tacitus, with an eye for the exotic or salacious detail, not afraid to make personal value judgements on his historical subjects. As a result, in spite of his insistence that he is trying to defend the Byzantines from accusations of decadence, the history comes across as a chronicle of human excess, frailty, debauchery, cruelty, and fanaticism. One needs to constantly remind oneself that the same is true of most of history when there is no legitimate way of removing bad rulers, and often even where there is, even at times we consider more 'civilised' (the Julio-Claudians jump to mind!). But what cannot be denied is that these are the annals of a long and steady decline. That decline was, more often than not, noble, heroic, even romantic; but all too often it was painfully avoidable.

This book is an abridged version of a trilogy, that originally comprised some twelve hundred pages, or approximately one per year, compressed down here to one for every three years. It is inevitably extremely dense, and often difficult to follow - in particular, it is difficult to avoid confusing names (there were no fewer than eleven emperors called 'Constantine', for example, in addition to a plethora of supporting characters with the same name).

But on the plus side the prose style is well-polished and consistent, and the author's enchantment with Byzantine civilisation - a peculiar and never again to be repeated blend of the Roman, the Greek, and the Middle Eastern - and especially with its art, shines through every chapter. All this makes for an entertaining, as well as highly informative, book.