Sweeping across the known world with unchecked devastation, the Black Death claimed between 75 million and 200 million lives in four short years. In this engaging and well-researched audiobook, the trajectory of the plague’s march west across Eurasia and the cause of the great pandemic is thoroughly explored. Fascinating insights into the medieval mind’s perception of the disease and examinations of contemporary accounts give a complete picture of what the world’s most effective killer meant to medieval society.

This audiobook is for anyone that enjoys crucial turning points in history. Napoleon was an unremarkable man who managed to change the entire landscape of the world 200 years ago. He has been hailed as a military genius, and his victories are still studied by international armed forces to this day. Through military exploit and the Napoleonic code, he was a man who came out of nowhere and changed the world. This audiobook describes not only how he did it, but why he did it; delve into the psychology of one of the most heroic despots ever known - Napoleon Bonaparte!

The Crusades are the prototype and epitome of the Holy War. The fight to take control of the city of Jerusalem, believed to be the most sacred Holy City to two distinct religions of Christianity and Islam, has lasted far longer than the two centuries of the Crusades, and its reach has extended far further than Europe and the Middle East.  

If anything, Karl Marx’s life reminds us of the power of the pen over the sword. During his lifetime, he lived in relative obscurity. Rather than making any waves, Marx was usually lucky just to make the rent. And to make the ongoing hardship of his life even worse, Karl Marx was afflicted with boils from the top of his head to the soles of his feet. But his pen would indeed demonstrate its power, and by the time 70-some years had passed since his demise, one-third of the entire planet would be living under regimes based upon his ideology. 

Over the course of just 200 years, the Ottoman Empire grew from a small, obscure Anatolian state into the most powerful Muslim nation in the world, controlling vast swathes of the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and North Africa. Within the empire, science, medicine, technology, and art flourished, and the Ottoman army became one of the most feared and efficient fighting forces in existence. Then came a period of gradual decline. 

What do you think of when you consider the Middle Ages? Knights in armor and damsels in distress? Vikings plundering monasteries? Religious dissenters burning at the stake? The dead bodies piling up as war, famine, and plague devastated Europe? Think again. While all these are part of the tapestry of the medieval era, the threads of politics, personality and war, culture, religion, education and the arts are vastly more intricate and fascinating. 

Alexander the Great. A boy, groomed for greatness from the earliest age, who would put his stamp on the world for generations to come. A man who sought immortality and achieved it in just 10 years. A soldier whose genius for strategy and tactics is still studied in the modern world. A ruler who understood how to win the hearts and minds of his subjects. This is the story of a Titan of the ancient world, a man who rose but, though he died, never truly fell.

World War I, or the Great War, was believed to be "the war to end all wars". Because of the incredible extent of destruction and the staggering number of wounded and dead, even those who lived through it could scarcely comprehend its horror. Beginning in 1914, alliances between powerful nations soon plunged the world into a global conflict. Fighting - including miserable trench warfare - broke out in practically every corner of Europe and spread around the world to Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.

In this audiobook, we will explore the man behind the revolution, explore the good and the bad of the man who - despite his lionization - was still a man with all of the foibles and complexities that can plague us all. From his days as a carefree medical student roving the South American countryside to his tenure as the most preeminent revolutionary in the world, the true story of Che Guevara is finally uncovered.

The Sumerians settled in the area known as Mesopotamia, between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, around 5,000 years ago. They produced many fundamental changes to the way in which human societies developed - these were the first city-builders, the first people to use wheeled vehicles, the first methodical astronomers, and the first people to develop a sophisticated written language. The Sumerians also produced art, music, and literature as well as created some of the first professional soldiers the world had ever seen. 

Violent confrontation between armed groups over the supply of illegal narcotics is something we commonly associate with criminal gangs in modern cities, but in the mid-19th century Great Britain went to war with Imperial China in order to continue to supply Chinese addicts with opium. The two wars that followed have become known as the Opium Wars, and they led to the utter defeat of China, the establishment of a British colony in Hong Kong, and the continuation of a narcotics trade that was worth millions of pounds each year to the British. 

The Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union lasted from the end of World War II until the end of the 1980s. Over the course of five decades, they never came to blows directly. Rather, these two world superpowers competed in other arenas that would touch almost every corner of the globe. This overview of the Cold War provides the story of how these two countries came to oppose one another and the impact it had on them and others around the world.

According to history books, the Roman Empire ended in 476 CE with the fall of Rome. But if you asked most people alive at that time, they would have pointed you to what they considered the continuation of the Roman Empire - the civilization we now call the Byzantine Empire. The Byzantines, however, were more than just a remnant of Roman glory. At its geographical peak, the Byzantine Empire stretched out across the Mediterranean world.

The 1918 outbreak of the H1N1 strain of influenza, popularly known as the Spanish flu, killed more people worldwide than World War I, which ended the same year. It infected nearly one-third of the world's population and killed 10 percent of those it struck. In its wake, schools and businesses closed, hospitals became overwhelmed, and the sick spilled out into makeshift care centers in public spaces. Policemen, public transportation workers, and everyday citizens in face masks were a common - and eerie - sight.

Rome is a city of myth and legend. The Eternal City, the city of the seven hills, the sacred city, the caput mundi, the center of the world, Roma, Rome, by any of her many names is a city built of history and blood, marble and water, war and conquest. From legendary beginnings, a city rose from the swamp surrounded by the seven hills and split by the Tiber River. Built and rebuilt, a sacred republic and a divine empire, blessed by a thousand gods and by One, the story of her rise and fall has been told and retold for a thousand years and is still relevant in today's world, as echoes of her ancient glory have shaped our culture, laws, lifestyle, and beliefs in subtle and pervasive ways.