The Middle Sea

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.