The Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean [Hardcover]

John Julius Norwich (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0385510233 | ISBN-13: 978-0385510233 | Publication Date: November 7, 2006

This lively, beautifully illustrated history of the civilizations that rose and fell on the lands bordering the Mediterranean Sea represents the culmination of a great historian’s unparalleled art, eye, and scholarship.

John Julius Norwich is renowned for his magisterial histories, including the two-volume A History of Venice and the three-volume Byzantium. The Middle Sea showcases the qualities that have made him one of the most respected and popular historians of our day: witty prose, scrupulous research, and an unerring ability to bring to life the dramatic event, the colorful character, and the telling detail.

Norwich traverses five thousand years of history, tracing the growth of culture, trade, political alliances and enmities, and religious movements from the Phoenician civilization to present-day Mediterranean nations.

In a vivid, fully accessible narrative, he recounts the achievements of the Phoenicians, those great sea traders who carried not just goods but also knowledge to Europe and parts of Asia, the glories of ancient Egypt, the extraordinary contributions of the Greeks, and the rise of the mighty Romans. The twin stories of Byzantium and Islam, the dominant forces after the fall of Rome, crescendo in the incredible saga of the Fourth Crusade and carry readers to the reemergence of a vibrant Europe.

From the far-reaching developments in medieval France to the Renaissance wars in Italy to the triumph of Isabella’s Spain, Norwich provides a brilliant portrait of the intermingling of ancient conflicts and modern sensibilities that shape life today on the shores of the Middle Sea.

Editorial Reviews

From The New Yorker

The Middle Sea, In his latest sweeping history, the author of "Byzantium" considers the "political fortunes" of the lands of the Mediterranean from the age of ancient Greece to the First World War. Taking as a starting point the region’s unique geography, which seems to have been "deliberately designed" as a "cradle of cultures," he focusses on the rise and fall of civilizations through battles and their heroes, paying particular attention to the Christian and Muslim struggle for dominance. At times, the geographical framework feels arbitrary. The Mediterranean’s bearing on the countries around it was not always as manifest as during antiquity; from 200 B.C. to 200 A.D., there was a higher density of commercial traffic than at any time in the following millennium. There are also some egregious omissions: art, social, and intellectual history are essentially passed over. But Norwich’s focus plays to his strengths as a military historian, and he produces, over six hundred pages, a highly readable chronicle.
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From Booklist

The littoral lands of the Mediterranean Sea are Norwich's stage for surveying millennia of power politics. An experienced expositor (Paradise of Cities, 2003), Norwich is irresistibly readable in his emphasis on would-be empire builders to whom the Mediterranean offered both a tempting avenue for embarking on conquest and a dangerous seaway from which enemies would appear. Norwich purposely excludes, however, navigation and navies as well as physical geography from his narrative. He favors the dramas inherent in the succession of empires that have risen and fallen around the Mediterranean from antiquity to World War I. In particular, Norwich emphasizes the characters and motivations of rulers who have affected affairs and frames them in consistently pithy descriptions that are by turns empathic and caustic. Along with the opinion, Norwich, superbly erudite yet having a sense of popular taste, efficiently chronicles the major wars and results and occasionally argues for the importance of battles history has overlooked. A fine single-volume history suited to any collection. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 688 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday (November 7, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385510233
• ISBN-13: 978-0385510233
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.6 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,253,721 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining but limited, August 2, 2007

By 

Kenneth A. Dailey "kadailey" (Cairo, Egypt and Nashville, Tennessee) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean (Paperback)

I love Norwich's writing style and have been a great fan of his Byzantine, Venetian, and Sicilian histories. The reader will quickly be seduced by the stories and the pages will turn. While it is evident that the writer is very knowledgeable about Medieval and even Renaissance and early modern topics in Europe, he is very limited, perhaps negatively biased in some non-European areas. Modern Egypt, for instance, received about a paragraph and most of that was inaccurate, making mistakes on who was khedive/sultan/king and when, which then caused me to wonder what other mistakes were present. The 1956 Suez Crisis where Israel invaded the Sinai implied that the Israelis were doing so as a result of Nasr violating a treaty, which is simply incorrect or in the least not remotely accurate. Nasr is dismissed as the man who ripped down the statue of the builder of the Suez Canal and nothing else.... and all that in three or four sentences. Once again, the cursory discussion of the Suez Crisis, the dismissal of much modern history, and some mistakes caused me to wonder what other areas were not treated correctly. As entertaining as the nymphomania of Isabel II of Spain is, it doesn't deserve page after page in comparison with much more important, if less fascinating, aspects of Mediterranean history.

It is my hope that this book will be updated, edited, and researched more thoroughly in any future printing.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Mediterranean Meditations, January 19, 2007

By 

Constantine Falliers "Delos Thalpor" (Englewood & Vail, CO) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean (Hardcover)

In impressive detail and stylish narrative this "Middle Sea" center of civilization and commerce, democracy and art for at least three millenia, from Homer to the 20th century wars, is written to provide valuable information for the sophisticated student and also an enjoyable meaningful perspective for any 21st century reader. The coverage of events, people and especially conflicts and adventures is outstanding. The prominent author's opinionated statements - Aristotle is provocatively and wrongly called "one of the most reactionary intellectuals - simply reflect the license of fame. In other instances, errors may be the result of the modern pressures to publish in a hurry: the ancient island of Thera is now called (the tourists' favorite) Santorini, not, as stated, the other way around; and - glaringly incorrect! - Mytilene is not the original name but just a town on the island known since antiquity (before the word lesbianism was introduced) as Lesbos. Except for these minor questions, this most recent book of the erudite lord Norwich is an outstanding contribution to our understanding of this "cradle" of our civilized worlds.

27 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Poor Concept; Poor Execution, April 8, 2008

By 

Steven M. Anthony (Arkansas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean (Vintage) (Paperback)

This book is bad on so many different levels, many of which simply derive from the fact that the concept of the book itself is irretrievably poor. Let's see, how about I write a book about the 5,000 years of civilizations bordering the Mediterranean Sea. Included will be Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, the rise and spread of Islam .... You get the idea, and the author was able to fit all of that in the first 86 pages!!!

As a result, we're left with writing that looks something like this: Caesar conquered Gaul. He returned to Rome and entered an alliance with Pompey and Crassus. Crassus went to Syria where he was defeated and killed by the Parthians. Pompey and Caesar had a civil war. Caesar chased Pompey to Egypt where he seduced Cleopatra. He returned to Rome where he was killed in the Senate. Mark Antony and Octavian avenged Caesar, then had their own civil war. Octavian won, changed his name to Augustus and became Emperor.

There, the last twenty years of the Roman Republic in one paragraph, mission accomplished. If that's the kind of writing you enjoy, and you don't already know the most basic historical background, then have at it.

Added to the faulty concept, is a very informal and borderline inappropriate writing style which detracts from the work.

I must say that after the initial 100 pages, wherein the author tears through 3,500 years of ancient history, things do improve, however not to the point of presenting a rational, well presented view of regional history.

In the Introduction, the author himself states, "...how could the whole thing possibly be compressed into one volume?" IT CAN'T, and therein lies the problem. I've thought that perhaps it could be helpful for a junior high student with no background in history whatsoever, but upon reflection, any effort that attempts a history of Ancient Greece in nine pages, the rise of Islam and the succeeding Caliphates of Damascus, Baghdad and al-Andalus in 14 pages and, believe it or not, Ancient Egypt in two pages, should best be left alone.