Tacitus' account of Nero's principate is an extraordinary piece of historical writing. His graphic narrative (including Annals XV) is one of the highlights of the greatest surviving historian of the Roman Empire. It describes how the imperial system survived Nero's flamboyant and hedonistic tenure as emperor, and includes many famous passages, from the Great Fire of Rome in AD 64 to the city-wide party organised by Nero's praetorian prefect, Tigellinus, in Rome. This edition unlocks the difficulties and complexities of this challenging yet popular text for students and instructors alike. It elucidates the historical context of the work and the literary artistry of the author, as well as explaining grammatical difficulties of the Latin for students. It also includes a comprehensive introduction discussing historical, literary and stylistic issues.

Tacitus' Annals of Imperial Rome recount the major historical events from the years shortly before the death of Augustus up to the death of Nero in AD 68. With clarity and vivid intensity he describes the reign of terror under the corrupt Tiberius, the great fire of Rome during the time of Nero, and the wars, poisonings, scandals, conspiracies and murders that were part of imperial life. Despite his claim that the Annals were written objectively, Tacitus' account is sharply critical of the emperors' excesses and fearful for the future of Imperial Rome, while also filled with a longing for its past glories.

The most comprehensive contemporaneous record of the rise and fall of the Carolingian Empire

Drawing on hundreds of newly available, top-secret KGB and party Central Committee documents, historian Matthew E. Lenoe reexamines the 1934 assassination of Leningrad party chief Sergei Kirov. Joseph Stalin used the killing as the pretext to unleash the Great Terror that decimated the Communist elite in 1937–1938; these previously unavailable documents raise new questions about whether Stalin himself ordered the murder, a subject of speculation since 1938.The book includes translations of 125 documents from the various investigations of the Kirov murder, allowing readers to reach their own conclusions about Stalin’s involvement in the assassination.

The enduring interest displayed by many readers in the character of China's great Empress Dowager Tzŭ Hsi, and the generous appreciation accorded to our work on her life and reign, have prompted the belief that the present work, covering a wider stretch of space and time, should prove interesting, and of some value, to those who desire to study the causes, immediate and remote, of recent and current events in the Far East. Until we understand something of the mainsprings of thought and action which determine the governance and daily life of a people-something of their atavistic memories and instincts, of their social, religious and economic systems, it is not possible to sympathise with them in their perils and crises of change, or to render them the assistance which appreciation of their motives and intelligent anticipation of their needs might supply. -- Introduction.

This is the story of the greatest empire the world has ever known. Simon Baker charts the rise and fall of the world's first superpower, focusing on six momentous turning points that shaped Roman history. Welcome to Rome as you've never seen it before - awesome and splendid, gritty and squalid. From the conquest of the Mediterranean beginning in the third century BC to the destruction of the Roman Empire at the hands of barbarian invaders some seven centuries later, we discover the most critical episodes in Roman history: the spectacular collapse of the 'free' republic, the birth of the age of the 'Caesars', the violent suppression of the strongest rebellion against Roman power, and the bloody civil war that launched Christianity as a world religion. At the heart of this account are the dynamic, complex but flawed characters of some of the most powerful rulers in history: men such as Pompey the Great, Julius Caesar, Augustus, Nero and Constantine. Putting flesh on the bones of these distant, legendary figures, Simon Baker looks beyond the dusty, toga-clad caricatures and explores their real motivations and ambitions, intrigues and rivalries. The superb narrative, full of energy and imagination, is a brilliant distillation of the latest scholarship and a wonderfully evocative account of Ancient Rome.

Within the English fall of Jerusalem tradition, nearly all scholarly attention has gone to Siege of Jerusalem, which has enjoyed critical and pedagogical attention of late. Michael Livingston's 2004 edition with the Middle English Texts Series/MIP drew attention to the text, and Adrienne Williams Boyarin has recently published a new translation with Broadview Press that appears in the Broadview Anthology of British Literature's medieval volume (and as a stand-alone volume). With this edition of the Destruction of Jerusalem, we hope to bring the poem (which is extant in more copies than Siege) into the conversation. METS/MIP is precisely the right series and press to publish Destruction. The work would complement METS volumes such as The King of Tars, Richard Coer de Lion, and Crusades romances such as Three Middle English Charlemagne Romances. Indeed, given METS's broad offerings in Middle English romance, the series is a natural home for Destruction. Destruction would be of tremendous value particularly in courses focused on Crusades traditions, traditions of medieval anti-Semitism, vernacular theology, or late medieval depictions of difference more broadly, matters of considerable scholarly and pedagogical interest to medievalists of late.