David Abulafia is Professor of Mediterranean History at Cambridge University and the author of The Mediterranean in History.
"This magnificent book...is teeming with colourful characters. Over
the course of nearly 800pp, we follow faiths; sail with fleets;
trade with bankers, financiers and merchants; raid with pirates and
observe battles and sieges; watch cities rise and fall and see
peoples migrate in triumph and tragedy. But at its heart, this is a
history of mankind - gripping, worldly, bloody, playful - that
radiates scholarship and a sense of wonder and fun, using the
Mediterranean as its medium, its watery road much
travelled."--Simon Sebag-Montefiore, Financial Times
"This memorable study, its scholarship tinged with indulgent humour
and an authorial eye for bizarre detail, celebrates the swirling
changeability at the heart of that wonderful symbiosis of man and
nature which once took place long Mediterranean shores"--Jonathan
Keates, The Sunday Telegraph
"An Everest of a book, brocaded with studious observation and
finely-tuned scholarship...the effect is mesmerising, as detail
accumulates meticulously."--Ian Thomson, The Independent
"David Abulafia's marvellous history of the Mediterranean is an
excellent corrective to oversimplified views of geopolitics."--The
Economist
"New, highly impressive book...magisterial
work..."--Prospect"Engagingly written, precisely documented, and
liberally studded with tales of the fantastic and absurd, the book
has much to offer the casual reader and is indispensible for
specialists in the region."--Publishers Weekly
"Abulafia writes in a popular style with an eye for interesting
sidelights on history, such as the backdating of the Trojan War by
Homer and Virgil, and quirky asides about modern Mediterranean
culture...this comprehensive, scholarly study contains much food
for thought."--Kirkus
"A comprehensive, fair-minded history."--The National Interest"The
Great Sea deserves a place on the shelf next to Braudel's classic
work."--Shelf Awareness
"David Abulafia's new book about the Mediterranean Sea, The Great
Sea, has everything a major work of history requires. An important
theme, solid research, magnificent writing and a perceptive insight
into human nature...As an introduction to this story - and as a
cautionary tale of what happens when the darkness in the human soul
crowds out the light - there is no better place to start than David
Abulafia's The Great Sea."--The California Literary Review
"For both specialists and interested general readers, this book
will be a treasure and become the standard work on the
topic."--Booklist Online"Book of the Year" selection, History
category--he Economist"David Abulafia, Professor of Mediterranean
History at Cambridge University, brings historians and interested
readers the ultimate biography of this unique sea, as seen and used
and experienced by the people who lived and still live on its long
coastline."--Bookbanter
"This magnificent history, at once sweeping and precise, spans the
period from 22,000 B.C. to 2010 A.D. to explicate the history of
human activity on and around the Mediterranean Sea...[Abulafia] is
a superb writer with a gift for lucid compression and an eye for
the telling detail...He has taken on a grand subject, and has
related and interpreted it with authority, exactitude, and verve.
His work deserves a wide and appreciative audience."--The Atlantic
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