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Marks, Henry. Byzantine Cuisine.

by Marks, Henry.

$ 47.00

Marks, Henry. Byzantine Cuisine. 2021 Brand new Comb-bound softcover. Unused Octavo @460 pp Reprint of 2002 edition

” Drawing on many sources, Marks gives us a look at the types of food consumed in the Empire and the herbs and spices used for seasoning, the cooking methods used, the customs and behavior to be maintained during a meal, and the types of cutlery, dishware, serving pieces, and furniture commonly in use.”

by Noble, Duncan.

$ 27.00

Noble, Duncan. Dawn of the Horse Warriors : Chariot and Cavalry Warfare 3000-600 BC Pen and Sword Military 2015 Hardcover in DJ Like New /Like New Unused Octavo 190 pp

“The domestication of the horse revolutionized warfare, granting unprecedented strategic and tactical mobility, allowing armies to strike with terrifying speed. The horse was first used as the motive force for chariots and then, in a second revolution, as mounts for the first true cavalry.

The period covered encompasses the development of the first clumsy ass-drawn chariots in Sumer; takes in the golden age of chariot warfare resulting from the arrival of the domesticated horse and the spoked wheel, then continues down through the development of the first regular cavalry force by the Assyrians and on to their eventual overthrow by an alliance of Medes and the Scythians, wild semi-nomadic horsemen from the Eurasian steppe. “

by Ruiz, Juan.

$ 27.00

Ruiz, Juan. The Book of Good Love. State University of New York Press 1970 Hardcover in DJ Like New Like New Unused Octavo 365 pp

“A masterpiece in the tradition of the Decameron and the Canterbury Tales, Juan Ruiz’s fourteenth-century Spanish narrative poem combines the comic and the serious, the bawdy and the practical, the satiric and the tender, the devout and the blasphemous. In a first prose translation, Professors Mignani and Di Cesare succeed in conveying the vitality and sly humor of the original. The poem consists of a loosely unified series of fourteen amorous adventures of the Archpriest of Hita, interlaced with debates, fabliaux, fables, and exempla. Ruiz suggests that while man ought to seek buen amor (true love, or love of God), he is prone to loco amor, or worldly love. The Book proposes to show human folly so that men may be forewarned of the bad and choose the good. The episodes related in the stanzas and in songs in various lyrical styles parody such conventions as courtly love, epic battle, or church ritual. Ruiz was clearly fascinated by the concrete, as well as the allegorical, for his episodes have dates and actual settings, and popular speech is incorporated into his verses. In their introduction, the translators survey the major scholarly studies of the poem and offer their own critical reading of it. Their annotated bibliography and notes to the translation will be useful to students as well as scholars.”

by Pizan, Christine de.

$ 32.00

Pizan, Christine de. The Boke of the Cyte of Ladyes. Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. 2014 Pictorial hardcover. Like New Unused. Octavo 622 pp

“Christine de Pizan attracted an international audience of admirers her during her lifetime, including many readers in England. The Boke of the Cyte of Ladyes (1521) is the earliest English translation of Le Livre de la cité des dames (ca. 1405) and the only version printed in French or English before the twentieth century. Her work stands as an early stronghold against misogynist thinking, with more than one hundred stories about women’s capacity for intelligence and virtue assembled under the auspices of Reason, Rectitude, and Justice to form an allegorical City of Ladies. Modern readers can now rediscover Christine de Pizan’s landmark defense of women in the French and English of its original readers. This new edition offers rich material for scholars interested in gender studies, history, humanism, and the field of Anglo-French literature. The facing page format lets readers closely compare the fifteenth-century Middle French of its female author with the sixteenth-century English text by a male translator. A critical introduction and scholarly annotations enhance its usefulness as a resource for students and critics.”

by Markale, Jean.

$ 15.00

Markale, Jean. The Grail : The Celtic Origins of the Sacred Icon. Inner Traditions 1999 Softcover. Like New Unused Octavo 186 pp

“The Celtic tales on which the Grail legend is based emphasize the theme of the Quest. Through his exploration of several versions of this myth that appeared in the Middle Ages, Jean Markale digs deep beneath the Christian veneer of these tales, allowing us to penetrate to the true meaning of the Grail and its Quest, legacies of a rich Celtic spirituality that has nourished the Western psyche for centuries. He also examines how these myths were later used by the Knights Templar, as well as how their links with Alchemy and Catharism played a decisive role in the shaping of Western Hermetic thought.”

by Phillips, Jonathan.

$ 27.00

Phillips, Jonathan. The Life and Legend of the Sultan Saladin. Yale University Press 2019 Hardcover in DJ Like New/Like New Unused Octavo 478 pp

“When Saladin recaptured Jerusalem from the Crusaders in 1187, returning the Holy City to Islamic rule for the first time in almost ninety years, he sent shockwaves throughout Christian Europe and the Muslim Near East that reverberate today.

It was the culmination of a supremely exciting life, fraught with challenges and contradictions but blessed occasionally with marvellous good fortune. Born into a significant Kurdish family in northern Iraq, Saladin shot to power in faraway Egypt thanks to the tutelage of his uncle. Over two decades, this warrior and diplomat fought under the banner of jihad, but at the same time worked tirelessly to build an immense dynastic empire that stretched from North Africa to Western Iraq. Gathering together a turbulent and diverse coalition he was able to capture Jerusalem, only to trigger the Third Crusade and face his greatest adversary, King Richard the Lionheart.” GoodReads

by Catherine Richardson.

$ 37.00

Catherine Richardson. Domestic Life and Domestic Tragedy in Early Modern England : The material life of the household. Manchester University Press 2006 Hardcover in DJ Like New /Like New Unused. Octavo 235 pp

“This book reconstructs one aspect of that imaginative process. It considers a range of printed and documentary evidence – the majority previously unpublished – for the way ordinary individuals thought about their houses and households. It then explores how writers of domestic tragedies engaged those attitudes to shape their representations of domesticity. It therefore offers a new method for understanding theatrical representations, based around a truly interdisciplinary study of the interaction between literary and historical methods”

by Chrystal, Paul.

$ 27.00

Chrystal, Paul. Women at War in the Classical World. Pen and Sword 2017 Hardcover in DJ Like New in DJ Unused Octavo 249 pp

“Paul Chrystal has written the first full length study of women and warfare in the Graeco Roman world. Although the conduct of war was generally monopolized by men, there were plenty of exceptions with women directly involved in its direction and even as combatants, Artemisia, Olympias, Cleopatra and Agrippina the Elder being famous examples. And both Greeks and Romans encountered women among their ‘barbarian’ enemies, such as Tomyris, Boudicca and Zenobia. More commonly, of course, women were directly affected by war as noncombatant victims, of rape and enslavement as spoils of war and this makes up an important strand of the author’s discussion. The portrayal of female warriors and goddesses in classical mythology and literature, and the use of war to justify gender roles and hierarchies, are also considered. Overall it is a landmark survey of how war in the Classical world affected and was affected by women.”

by Sheldon, Rose.

$ 27.00

Sheldon, Rose. Ambush Surprise Attack in Ancient Greek Warfare. Frontline Books 2012 Hardcover in DJ Like New Unused Octavo 282 pp

“There are two images of warfare that dominate Greek history. The better known is that of Achilles, the Homeric hero skilled in face-to-face combat to the death. He is a warrior who is outraged by deception on the battlefield. The alternative model, equally Greek and also taken from Homeric epic, is Odysseus, ‘the man of twists and turns’ of The Odyssey. To him, winning by stealth, surprise or deceit was acceptable. Greek warfare actually consists of many varieties of fighting. It is common for popular writers to assume that the hoplite phalanx was the only mode of warfare used by the Greeks. The fact is, however, that the use of spies, intelligence gathering, ambush, and surprise attacks at dawn or at night were also a part of Greek warfare, and while not the supreme method of defeating an enemy, such tactics always found their place in warfare when the opportunity or the correct terrain or opportunity presented itself. Ambush will dispel both the modern and ancient prejudices against irregular warfare and provides a fresh look at the tactics of the ancient Greeks.”

by Lifshitz, Felice.

$ 32.00

Lifshitz, Felice. Religious Women in Early Carolingian Francia. Fordham University Press 2014 Hardcover in DJ Like New/Like New Unused Octavo 349 pp

“Religious Women in Early Carolingian Francia , a groundbreaking study of the intellectual and monastic culture of the Main Valley during the eighth century, looks closely at a group of manuscripts associated with some of the best-known personalities of the European Middle Ages, including Boniface of Mainz and his beloved, abbess Leoba of Tauberbischofsheim. This is the first study of these Anglo-Saxon missionaries to Germany to delve into the details of their lives by studying the manuscripts that were produced in their scriptoria and used in their communities. The author explores how one group of religious women helped to shape the culture of medieval Europe through the texts they wrote and copied, as well as through their editorial interventions. Using compelling manuscript evidence, she argues that the content of the women’s books was overwhelmingly gender-egalitarian and frequently feminist (i.e., resistant to patriarchal ideas). This intriguing book provides unprecedented glimpses into the feminist consciousness of the women’s and mixed-sex communities that flourished in the early Middle Ages.”

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