{"title":"Books by Peter Heather","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9780141988535","title":"Christendom","description":"\u003cb\u003e'A fascinating story about a religion in a surprisingly precarious position' Dan Jones, \u003ci\u003eSunday Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'Superb storytelling ... captivating and profound'\u003ci\u003e Literary Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'A page-turner' \u003ci\u003eThe Spectator\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e*A major new reinterpretation of Christendom, by one of our foremost medieval historians*\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the fourth century AD, a new faith exploded out of Palestine. Overwhelming the paganism of Rome, and converting the Emperor Constantine in the process, it resoundingly defeated a host of other rivals. Almost a thousand years later, all of Europe was controlled by Christian rulers, and the religion, ingrained within culture and society, exercised a monolithic hold over its population. But, as Peter Heather shows in this compelling new history, there was nothing inevitable about Christendom's rise to Europe-wide dominance.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn exploring how the Christian religion became such a defining feature of the European landscape, and how a small sect of isolated and intensely committed congregations was transformed into a mass movement centrally directed from Rome, Peter Heather shows how Christendom constantly battled against both so-called 'heresies' and other forms of belief. From the crisis that followed the collapse of the Roman empire, which left the religion teetering on the edge of extinction, to the astonishing revolution of the eleventh century and beyond in which the Papacy emerged as the head of a vast international corporation, Heather traces Christendom's chameleon-like capacity for self-reinvention and astounding willingness to mobilize well-directed force.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eChristendom's achievement was not, or not only, to define official Christianity, but - from its scholars and its lawyers, to its provincial officials and missionaries in far-flung corners of the continent - to transform it into an institution that wielded effective religious authority across nearly all of the disparate peoples of medieval Europe. This is its extraordinary story.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e'Sweeping and engaging history ... a non-triumphalist history of the triumph of Christianity, and all the more powerful for it' \u003ci\u003eFinancial Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43201491828914,"sku":"9780141988535","price":18.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780141988535_3666ef6e-a1f3-431f-baa8-cab084ee6915.jpg?v=1786011202"},{"product_id":"9780330491365","title":"The Fall of the Roman Empire","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe epic story of the inevitable fall of Rome's glory\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eThe Fall of the Roman Empire\u003c\/i\u003e, Peter Heather skillfully weaves a captivating tale of an ancient and long-lasting superpower that crumbled within the short space of a century. Its downfall was not instigated by massive rebellions or towering foes but by a small group of German-speaking asylum-seekers who audaciously defeated a vast Roman army and killed an Emperor, slowly eroding the bedrock of an empire that stood tall for over four hundred years.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHeather's engaging narrative exposes the intricate dynamics that culminated in the empire's fateful decline. This extraordinary story pierces the glamour of the gilded imperial court, and delves into Rome’s interactions with Europe's barbarians, who, after centuries of contact, gradually weakened and eventually dismantled the empire.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHailed as 'triumphant' and 'fascinating', \u003ci\u003eThe Fall of the Roman Empire\u003c\/i\u003e offers a masterful blend of meticulous analysis and vivid storytelling, providing fresh insights into an enigmatic chapter of history that continues to captivate the minds of historians and enthusiasts alike.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43201651343538,"sku":"9780330491365","price":16.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780330491365.jpg?v=1786013579"},{"product_id":"9780141991160","title":"Why Empires Fall","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eWhat can the fall of Rome teach us about the decline of the West today? A historian and a political economist, both experts in their field, investigate\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOver the last three centuries, the West rose to dominate the planet. Then, suddenly, around the turn of the millennium, history reversed. Faced with economic stagnation and internal political division, the West has found itself in rapid decline.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis is not the first time the global order has witnessed such a dramatic rise and fall. The Roman Empire followed a similar arc from dizzying power to disintegration - a fact that is more than a strange historical coincidence. In \u003ci\u003eWhy Empires Fall\u003c\/i\u003e, historian Peter Heather and political economist John Rapley use this Roman past to think anew about the contemporary West, its state of crisis, and what paths we could take out of it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn this exceptional, transformative intervention, Heather and Rapley explore the uncanny parallels - and productive differences - between the two cases, moving beyond the familiar tropes of invading barbarians and civilizational decay to learn new lessons from ancient history. From 399 to 1999, the life cycles of empires, they argue, sow the seeds of their inevitable destruction. The era of western global domination has reached its end - so what comes next?\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56224757055861,"sku":"9780141991160","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780141991160_61de32fc-0a65-4b62-aabd-319d665aa58d.jpg?v=1786011290"},{"product_id":"9780631209324","title":"The Goths","description":"The volume is divided into three parts, corresponding to the three main phases in Gothic history: their early history down to the fourth century, the revolution in Gothic society set in motion by the arrival of the Huns, and the history of the Gothic successor states to the western Roman Empire. At its heart lies a new vision of Gothic identity, and of the social caste by whom it was defined and transmitted.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56293932466549,"sku":"9780631209324","price":36.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780631209324_e3b58d07-992d-4d22-88b6-2db3d6793c8d.jpg?v=1786015026"},{"product_id":"9780195325416","title":"The Fall of the Roman Empire","description":"The death of the Roman Empire is one of the perennial mysteries of world history. Now, in this groundbreaking book, Peter Heather proposes a stunning new solution: Centuries of imperialism turned the neighbors Rome called barbarians into an enemy capable of dismantling an Empire that had dominated their lives for so long. A leading authority on the late Roman Empire and on the barbarians, Heather relates the extraordinary story of how Europe's barbarians, transformed by centuries of contact with Rome on every possible level, eventually pulled the empire apart. He shows first how the Huns overturned the existing strategic balance of power on Rome's European frontiers, to force the Goths and others to seek refuge inside the Empire. This prompted two generations of struggle, during which new barbarian coalitions, formed in response to Roman hostility, brought the Roman west to its knees. The Goths first destroyed a Roman army at the battle of Hadrianople in 378, and went on to sack Rome in 410. The Vandals spread devastation in Gaul and Spain, before conquering North Africa, the breadbasket of the Western Empire, in 439. We then meet Attila the Hun, whose reign of terror swept from Constantinople to Paris, but whose death in 453 ironically precipitated a final desperate phase of Roman collapse, culminating in the Vandals' defeat of the massive Byzantine Armada: the west's last chance for survival.Peter Heather convincingly argues that the Roman Empire was not on the brink of social or moral collapse. What brought it to an end were the barbarians.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56311591829877,"sku":"9780195325416","price":19.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780195325416_455063d6-5cab-4ca6-a8b9-503744c884f5.jpg?v=1786011188"},{"product_id":"empires-and-barbarians","title":"Empires and Barbarians","description":"Empires and Barbarians presents a fresh, provocative look at how a recognizable Europe came into being in the first millennium AD. With sharp analytic insight, Peter Heather explores the dynamics of migration and social and economic interaction that changed two vastly different worlds--the undeveloped barbarian world and the sophisticated Roman Empire--into remarkably similar societies and states. The book's vivid narrative begins at the time of Christ, when the Mediterranean circle, newly united under the Romans, hosted a politically sophisticated, economically advanced, and culturally developed civilization--one with philosophy, banking, professional armies, literature, stunning architecture, even garbage collection. The rest of Europe, meanwhile, was home to subsistence farmers living in small groups, dominated largely by Germanic speakers. Although having some iron tools and weapons, these mostly illiterate peoples worked mainly in wood and never built in stone. The farther east one went, the simpler it became: fewer iron tools and ever less productive economies. And yet ten centuries later, from the Atlantic to the Urals, the European world had turned. Slavic speakers had largely superseded Germanic speakers in central and Eastern Europe, literacy was growing, Christianity had spread, and most fundamentally, Mediterranean supremacy was broken.Bringing the whole of first millennium European history together, and challenging current arguments that migration played but a tiny role in this unfolding narrative, Empires and Barbarians views the destruction of the ancient world order in light of modern migration and globalization patterns.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57466541539701,"sku":"9780199735600","price":32.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780199735600.jpg?v=1785654599"},{"product_id":"restoration-of-rome","title":"The Restoration of Rome","description":"In 476 AD the last of Rome’s emperors was deposed by a barbarian general, the son of one of Attila the Hun’s henchmen, and the imperial vestments were despatched to Constantinople. The curtain fell on the Roman Empire in Western Europe, its territories divided between successor kingdoms constructed around barbarian military manpower. But if the Roman Empire was dead, the dream of restoring it refused to die. In many parts of the old Empire, real Romans still lived, holding on to their lands, the values of their civilisation, its institutions; the barbarians were ready to reignite the imperial flame and to enjoy the benefits of Roman civilization, the three greatest contenders being Theoderic, Justinian and Charlemagne. But, ultimately, they would fail and it was not until the reinvention of the papacy in the eleventh century that Europe’s barbarians found the means to generate a new Roman Empire, an empire which has lasted a thousand years.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57504871809397,"sku":"9781447241072","price":18.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781447241072.jpg?v=1786953789"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-peter-heather.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}