
Empires of the Normans
Makers of Europe, Conquerors of Asia
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Narrated by:
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Luke Thompson
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By:
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Levi Roach
About this listen
A brilliant global history of the Normans, who—beyond the conquest of England—spread their empire to eventually dominate Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East
14 October 1066.
As Harold II, the last crowned Anglo-Saxon king of England, lay dying in Sussex, the Duke of Normandy was celebrating an unlikely victory. William “The Bastard” had emerged from interloper to successor of the Norman throne. He had survived the carnage of the Battle of Hastings and, two months later on Christmas day, he would be crowned king of England. No longer would Anglo-Saxons or Vikings rule England; this was now the age of the Normans.
A momentous event in European history, the defeat of the Anglo-Saxons had the most dramatic effect of any defeat in the high Middle Ages. In a few short months, the leader of northern France became the dominant ruler of Britain. Over the coming decades, the Anglo-Saxon kingdom would be rebuilt around a new landowning class. During the next century, as the Norman kings laid the foundations of modern Britain, their power would spread irresistibly across Europe. From Scandinavia down to Sicily, Malta, and Seville, the Normans built magnificent castles and churches. They created a new Europe in the image of their own nobility, recording their power with unprecedented vision, including the Domesday Book.
Empire of the Normans tells the extraordinary story of how the descendants of Viking marauders in northern France came to dominate European, Mediterranean, and Middle Eastern politics. It is a tale of ambitious adventures and fierce pirates, of fortunes made and fortunes lost. Across the generations, the Normans made their influence felt across Western Europe and the Mediterranean, from the British Isles to North Africa, and even to the Holy Land, with a combination of military might, political savvy, deeply held religious beliefs, and a profound sense of their own destiny.
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Sixteen hundred years ago Britain left the Roman Empire and swiftly fell into ruin. Grand cities and luxurious villas were deserted and left to crumble, and civil society collapsed into chaos. Into this violent and unstable world came foreign invaders from across the sea, and established themselves as its new masters. The Anglo-Saxons traces the turbulent history of these people across the next six centuries. It explains how their earliest rulers fought relentlessly against each other for glory and supremacy, and then were almost destroyed by the onslaught of the vikings.
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"Pretty Good"
- By Stephen on 05-30-21
By: Marc Morris
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Defenders of the West
- The Christian Heroes Who Stood Against Islam
- By: Raymond Ibrahim
- Narrated by: John McLain
- Length: 13 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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In Defenders of the West, the author of Sword and Scimitar follows up with vivid and dramatic profiles of eight extraordinary warriors—some saints, some sinners—who defended the Christian West against Islamic invasions. Discover the real Count Dracula, Spain’s El Cid, England’s Richard Lionheart, and many other historical figures whose true and original claim to fame revolved around their defiant stance against jihadist aggression.
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Inconvenient truth regarding Islam and historical fact
- By Michael on 12-11-23
By: Raymond Ibrahim
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Henry V
- The Astonishing Triumph of England's Greatest Warrior King
- By: Dan Jones
- Narrated by: Dan Jones
- Length: 14 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Henry V reigned over England for only nine years and four months and died at the age of just thirty-five, but he looms over the landscape of the late Middle Ages and beyond. The victor of Agincourt, he is remembered as the acme of kingship, a model to be closely imitated by his successors. William Shakespeare deployed Henry V as a study in youthful folly redirected to sober statesmanship. For one modern medievalist, Henry was, quite simply, “the greatest man who ever ruled England.”
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Amazing Book & Fantastic Storyteller
- By L. Reilly on 11-26-24
By: Dan Jones
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The Thirty Years War
- Europe's Tragedy
- By: Peter H. Wilson
- Narrated by: Matthew Waterson
- Length: 33 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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The Thirty Years War devastated seventeenth-century Europe, killing nearly a quarter of all Germans and laying waste to towns and countryside alike. Peter Wilson offers the first new history in a generation of a horrifying conflict that transformed the map of the modern world.
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Less caffeine, narrator
- By Jeff Joyner on 02-12-24
By: Peter H. Wilson
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Caste
- The Origins of Our Discontents
- By: Isabel Wilkerson
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 15 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings. Beautifully written, original, and revealing, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents is an eye-opening story of people and history, and a reexamination of what lies under the surface of ordinary lives and of American life today.
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Brilliant, articulate, highly listenable.
- By GM on 08-05-20
By: Isabel Wilkerson
What listeners say about Empires of the Normans
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- International Traveler
- 07-15-23
Great story and great reading
This book was enjoyable because it broke done the complex world the Normans made into edible bits. The Normans were everywhere and nowhere in Europe and the Mediterranean but the author deftly showed how they made their mark on their world and even ours. The reading was very good as well. It strongly supported the story of the author.
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- Pippi Momma
- 12-13-24
My favorite narration yet!
I enjoyed this so much I’ve listened to it three times in the past week. I find the history itself engaging, but the narrator is absolutely spectacular. Amid stacks of monotonous readers struggling to pronoun non-English names, Luke Thompson intuitively interpreted every line, and easily flowed between English and French character and place names. To me this narration exceeds the very high bar previously set by Dion Graham in his performance of The Wager.
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- Amanda Gamez(Davis)
- 12-13-22
pretty good
has your typical modern biases, anti-crusade, anti-christian, etc...despite that, it was still mostly good info and enjoyable listen.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 08-05-23
disappointing
I was very excited for this. Considering the outsized role Normandy played in medieval history, I was expecting to learn a lot. I know nothing about the history of medieval Normandy and am only vaguely aware that there were Normans in Sicily.
Unfortunately, most of the book focuses on the parts most familiar (William and the Norman invasion of England) and rather less on the rest. Not nearly enough on Normandy itself and it's contemporary history, minimal on the Mediterranean campaigns.
The timeline also made it challenging to follow, bouncing between jumping back and forth through time.
It argued that the Normans were unique because they were everywhere, but never explained what tied them together. It argued that the Normans spoke French and were therefore just like the rest of "Continental Europe". It never investigated why Normans and not the Angevins or anyone else in that region of France was conquering half of Europe - especially after arguing that Normandy was just like the rest of Northern France!
If you don't have a general history of the Norman invasion, then it's probably worth it. But if you came to this book for a deeper dive, then I'd leave it alone.
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3 people found this helpful