Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization

IGNORE THE ONE-STAR REVIEWS BY JADED AND ENVIOUS ACADEMICS! "Lost to the West" is one of those books that should be required reading in American classrooms... but it is not. And the reasons why are simple: It's a popular history (strike one) of a virtually banned subject (strike two). That subject is the Byzantine Empire, AKA Byzantium, the ancient name for Constantinople (modern Istanbul in Turkey), that ancient successor to Rome that called itself the Roman Empire and outlasted its Western predecessor by hundreds of years. Constantinople was found by Emperor Constantine in the fourth century on the ruins of an ancient Greek city called Byzantium. While Rome and the Western Roman Empire collapsed under the weight of invasions and moral decadence, Constantiniple and the Eastern Empire thrived and grew. The people of the Eastern Empire were Greeks and their empire consisted of modern day Turkey, the Levant, and North Africa. Despite their largely Greek population and language, they called themselves Romans while the West derisively called them Byzantines. Rome fell in 476 AD but Contantinople would remain the capital of the Eastern Romans until May 29, 1453, when the Islamic Turks finally overran the city and declared themeselves the Ottomon Empire, the longest running of the Sunni Caliphates. Istanbul is the corrupted Arabic-Turkish replacement name for Constantinople. For a variety of reasons, some academic and some religious, Western intellectuals have ignored this important player in global history. In fact, to say there has been a conspiracy by Western Academics to cover up Byzantine historical relevance is an understatement. Most of Western Civilization was salvaged from the Roman collapse by the Roman Catholic Church. And the Roman Catholic Church was the arch enemy of the Orthodox faith and it's "pope", the Metroploitan of Constantinople. The entire history of conflict and competition between Western and Eastern Europe is tied to this. As is the current conflict in the Middle East, the role of Turkey in world affairs, the Russian (Orthodox) and Ukrainian (Roman Catholic) divide, yadda yadda. And this explains why Americans can't comprehend a variety of important but diverse topics ranging from Islamic history to the German and Turkish animosity toward Russia to Bible Prophecy. We have been taught that the intellectual flame of the most advanced ancient civilizations moved Westward from Egypt to Greece to Rome, then Paris, Berlin and Vienna (the Holy Roman Empire, which was neither) and then across seas to London then to NYC and Washington DC. And we forget that for 1000 years, Constantinople protected the Eastern Flank of Europe from the Arab and Central Asian Hordes, while being raped and pillaged by Franco-German Crusaders and Venetian Merchant-Soldiers... but I digress. Look, just read this book. It's really well-done -- a readable, well-researched, fun history of a time and place you canot afford to be ignorant about. Lars Brownworth is scorned by some for the gross sin of being a mere High School History Teacher instead of a University Academic. And not only did he choose this forbidden topic to popularize, he did so via a popular Podcast and a dozen YouTube videos before finally publishing this book. Oh, the scandal! If you think I am being facetious or writing with excessive hyperbole, read the one-star reviews here from academics. And after you do, put on your tinfoli hat, join me in the conspiracy nuttery and READ THIS IMPORTANT BOOK. If you like history, especially as related to the Medieval Period, the Crusades, and the Middle East in general, you will love this book. It is HIGHLY Recommended!

Prospective readers of Lars Brownworth's "Lost to the West" should be aware what they are getting. For those unfamiliar with Brownworth, he was made famous in a uniquely 21st century way when he produced a podcast called "12 Byzantine Rulers" a narrative retelling of 1,000 years of Roman history through the lives of 12 emperors who reigned from Constantinople. The podcasts, which were told with a mix of passion, humor, facts, and a dollop of melodrama, were a runaway hit, downloaded by over 100,000 listeners. From this success, Brownworth earned a book contract. "Lost to the West" continues very much in the vein of the podcast. It isn't an academic history by any stretch, but is instead what some might call with derision a "popular history." The story is told as narrative with the same melodrama as the podcast. No reader will have a moment of trouble telling Brownworth's anointed heroes from his villains in any of the chapters. His often shallow analysis would surely be read as laughable by serious historians, as he time and again points to decisions and battles which, if only they had gone differently, might have postponed the "Dark Ages" by "centuries" or even avoided them altogether. Likewise, as an apparently unabashed fan of the "great man" view of history, Brownworth sees the fate of the empire turning perpetually on the choices of individuals with little attention to the Empire's severe structural deficiencies as a highly centralized autocratic economic and political system unable to readily adapt to changing circumstances. Careful readers knowledgeable about the period will also detect quite a few errors of fact in the text. And for all that I loved the book and happily give it five stars. Condemning Brownworth for not writing an academic history would be pedantic in the extreme; his goal was plainly to write an entertaining book which would invite those unfamiliar with the Byzantine history he loves to take a quick tour and maybe even get hooked. I cannot imagine he was trying to exhaustively cover more than 1,000 years of history but was seeking to write a page turner, much as his podcast (of which I was a devoted fan) made listeners eagerly await the next episode. While likely any student producing a paper on the subject would hopefully receive a less than satisfactory grade if they based it on "Lost to the West," readers will find endless entertainment in Brownworth's gift for supplying salacious details and crafting larger than life characters into heroes. While good history is rarely the stuff of good vs. evil (and Brownworth's distaste for Persia and the Islamic east and outright distain for the Feudal west are both so plain that they drip from the page) they do make for the stuff of great reads. One can easily quibble with his method as a historian, but as a storyteller he delivers a tale that will leave many wanting to know when they can expect his next work and maybe even convince some to learn more about the

One of the most interesting chapters of history is the era of the Byzantine Empire, which stretched roughly from the founding of Constantinople in 330 until its fall to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. However, you'd never know it from slogging through some of the histories of the period. Those that weren't written for scholars of the era were simply poorly and densely written. For the casual reader, these became anathema and oft times resulted in him or her simply skipping over the era. Histories of the West in popular and readable form proliferated, and thus many casual readers of history know much more about the Franks, Saxons and Normans than about the Byzantines. It was the Byzantine Empire that provided the stronghold that kept the Moslems out of as devastated Eastern Europe and preserved the Hellenic Culture that later jump-started the Renaissance. Lars Brownworth has come along and finally given us the readable, interesting survey of Byzantine History we needed. It is a solid survey of the times, its rulers, its wars, usurpations and conspiracies, with a look at the achievements of a Byzantine culture that managed to thrive despite the many political distractions. Mr. Brownworth also does not forget the "story" in "history;" the book is a breezy, well-written journey through the years and dynasties. Begin reading and it actually becomes difficult to stop. There are few other books I can say that about; books that make the reader feel less of a spectator and more of a participant. If you want to know the whys and wherefores of the Byzantine Empire, there is no better place to begin

The Roman Empire fell on Tuesday, May 29, 1453, when Mehmed II sacked Constantinople, and Constantine XI Dragases stripped off his imperial battle gear and died alone and unrecognized. If you dated the fall to September 5, 476, when Romulus Augustulus surrendered his crown and scepter to the Vandal Odoacer, you would be half right. That is indeed when the western half of the empire fell, setting off the so-called "Dark Ages" in earnest. But the eastern half lived on for another 1000 years, waxing and waning in influence from the Mediterranean to the Euphrates and from the Balkans to the Nile. It was finally eclipsed by the triumph of the Ottomans, never to rise again. Lars Brownworth is not a professional historian, but he is a fantastic history-teller. "Lost to the West" is a portrait of the history of the eastern half of the empire from its founding by Constantine the Great to its demise under his namesake. The major "great men" (and women) as well as big events find a place in his fast-moving narrative: Constantine, Justinian, Belisarius, the Council of Nicea, the erection of Hagia Sophia, the Great Schism, and the centuries long battle with Islam. Professional historians will probably find something to quibble with here and there. But if you know nothing about Byzantium (as the eastern empire came to be known), then Brownworth is the place to start. He includes a list of primary and secondary sources at the end of the book, as well as a chronological list of eastern emperors. Highly recommended.