Books about Constantinople from Amazon.com

Now in trade paperback, 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 Mehmed 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 jihad between the West and the Middle East..
Price: $5.86 [Notify me when price goes down.]

At the age of eighteen, Patrick Leigh Fermor set off from the heart of London on an epic journey—to walk to Constantinople A Time of Gifts is the rich and sparkling account of his adventures as far as Hungary, after which Between the Woods and the Water continues the story to the Iron Gates that divide the Carpathian and Balkan mountains. Acclaimed for its sweep and intelligence, Leigh Fermor's book explores a remarkable moment in time. Hitler has just come to power but war is still ahead, as he walks through a Europe soon to be forever changed—through the Lowlands to Mitteleuropa, to Teutonic and Slav heartlands, through the baroque remains of the Holy Roman Empire, up the Rhine and down to the Danube.

At once a memoir of coming-of-age, an account of a journey, and a dazzling exposition of the English language, A Time of Gifts is also a portrait of a continent already showing ominous signs of the holocaust to come..
Price: $7.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The journey that Patrick Leigh Fermor began in 1933 at the age of eighteen—to cross Europe on foot with an ‘emergency’ allowance of a pound a day—proved so rich in experiences that when much later he sat down to describe them, they overflowed into more than one volume. Undertaken as the storms of war gathered, and providing a context for unfolding events in Central Europe, this journey has captivated generations. Between the Woods and the Water has won as many prestigious awards as its predecessor.

The opening of Between the Woods and the Water finds Leigh Fermor crossing the Danube, at the moment where his first volume—A Time of Gifts—left off. He takes the reader with him downriver to Budapest, then on horseback across the Great Hungarian Plain and over the Rumanian border into Transylvania. Remote castles, mountain villages, monasteries and towering ranges that are the haunt of bears, wolves, eagles, gypsies and a variety of sects are all savored in the approach to the Iron Gates dividing the Carpathian mountains and the Balkans where, for now, the account ends..
Price: $5.67 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This classic account shows how the fall of Constantinople in May 1453, after a siege of several weeks, came as a bitter shock to Western Christendom. The city's plight had been neglected, and negligible help was sent in this crisis. To the Turks, victory not only brought a new imperial capital, but guaranteed that their empire would last. To the Greeks, the conquest meant the end of the civilisation of Byzantium, and led to the exodus of scholars stimulating the tremendous expansion of Greek studies in the European Renaissance..
Price: $9.98 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Byzantium - Constantinople - Istanbul: founded as a Greek settlement on the Bosporus, the city's history is replete with significant political and cultural developments. The Hagia Sophia stems from the early Christian era, the Middle Ages bequeathed us churches and monasteries rich in mosiacs as well as illuminated manuscripts and icons; and the cultural Renaissance in 1453 brought magnificent palaces and mosques, calligraphic treasures, and book and miniature paintings inspired by Persian and Arabic forms..
Price: $16.47 [Notify me when price goes down.]

"I set out upon Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire [and] was immediately dominated by both the story and the style," recalled Winston Churchill "I devoured Gibbon. I rode triumphantly through it from end to end and enjoyed it all....I was not even estranged by his naughty footnotes." In the two centuries since its completion, Gibbon's magnum opus--which encompasses some thirteen hundred years as it swings across Europe, North Africa, and Asia--has refused to go the way of many "classics" and grow musty on the shelves. "Gibbon is a landmark and a signpost--a landmark of human achievement: and a signpost because the social convulsions of the Roman Empire as described by him sometimes prefigure and indicate convulsions which shake the whole world today," wrote E.M. Forster. Never far below the surface of the magnificent narrative lies the author's wit and sweeping irony, exemplified by Gibbon's famous definition of history as "little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind."

The third volume contains chapters forty-nine through seventy-one of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire..
Price: $3.96 [Notify me when price goes down.]

During the early Middle Ages, travellers to the East returned with stories of a place called Miklagarth, a city so vast that its churches, palaces and monasteries covered the land and so rich that its ruler could scatter bagfuls of gold among his astonished guests. This was no legend or tall tale for Miklagarth was a real place. Better known as Constantinople, it was the capital city of the empire of Byzantium and a major political force in the eastern Mediterranean for over a thousand years. The mythical aura that surrounded Constantinople was no accident. It was assiduously cultivated by the Byzantine emperors to bolster their power, wealth and prestige. Jonathan Harris examines the intriguing interaction between the spiritual and the political, the mythical and the actual and reconstructs the awe-inspiring city in its heyday in 1200..
Price: $16.97 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This title details the epic four-month siege of the city of Constantinople, last vestige of the once mighty Roman and Byzantine Empires. Mehmet 'The Conqueror' led an army of 80,000 men with a massive siege train against the city. Defending were a mere 10,000 men under the Emperor Constantine XI. The Turkish artillery battered the ancient city walls mercilessly, levelling a large section. A gallant defence held off the massive Turkish assault for several hours. Refusing appeals to flee, Constantine returned to the breaches and fought until overwhelmed and killed. Thus died the last Emperor of the Byzantines, and with him his once glorious empire..
Price: $5.89 [Notify me when price goes down.]

.
Price: $17.13 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In 1202, zealous western Christians gathered in Venice determined to liberate Jerusalem from the grip of Islam. But the crusaders never made it to the Holy Land. Steered forward by the shrewd Venetian doge, they descended instead on Constantinople, wreaking devastation so terrible and inflicting scars so deep that as recently as 2001 Pope John Paul II offered an apology to the Greek Orthodox Church.

The crusaders spared no one: They raped and massacred thousands, plundered churches, and torched the lavish city. A prostitute danced on the altar of the ravaged Hagia Sophia. And by 1204, barbarism masquerading as piety had shattered one of the great civilizations of history. Here, on the eight hundredth anniversary of the sack, is the extraordinary story of this epic catastrophe, told for the first time outside of academia by Jonathan Phillips, a leading expert on the crusades.

Knights and commoners, monastic chroniclers, courtly troubadours, survivors of the carnage, and even Pope Innocent III left vivid accounts detailing the events of those two fateful years. Using their remarkable letters, chronicles, and speeches, Phillips traces the way in which any region steeped in religious fanaticism, in this case Christian Europe, might succumb to holy war.

.
Price: $1.75 [Notify me when price goes down.]