Byzantium: Beyond the Cliché is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Maria Mavroudi, Professor of History at UC Berkeley. Maria Mavroudi specializes in the study of the Byzantine Empire and this wide-ranging conversation explores her extensive research on the Byzantine Empire and how it has repeatedly been undervalued by historians despite its having been a military and cultural powerhouse for more than a millennium.
This carefully-edited book includes an introduction, Beyond the High-School Narrative, and questions for discussion at the end of each chapter:
- Becoming A Byzantinist – Inspiration and motivation
- Historical Background – Byzantine beginnings
- The High-School Narrative – History as a cultural mirror
- Recovering Truth – A never-ending goal
- Building Knowledge – Standing on the shoulders of giants
- Annotated Discoveries – Leo the Mathematician, for example
- A Translational Discovery – From Arabic to Greek, surprisingly
- Arrows of Causality – Consequential greatness
- Decline – A matter of opinion?
- Extracting Meaning – Interpreting human experiences
- Ever-Moving Targets – Arab-Greek bilingualism and its implications
Available in electronic format on all major booksellers, including:
Byzantium: Beyond the Cliché is also part of the five-part Ideas Roadshow Collection, Conversations About History, Volume 2, which is available in hardcover, paperback and electronic format.
