Landmark Library

In the 7th and 8th centuries AD, armies inspired by the new religion of Islam burst out of Arabia to subjugate the Levant, southwest Asia, North Africa and the Iberian peninsula. These Arab conquests followed immediately after the Prophet Mohammed's death in 632. By this time, against all the odds, he had managed to unite the feuding tribes of Arabia at the point of his sword. The Muslim conquests lasted until 750, by which time several generations of marauding Arab armies had carved out an Islamic empire (the Umayyad empire, centred on Baghdad) which, in size and population, rivalled that of Rome at its zenith, extending from the shores of the Atlantic in the west to the snow-bounds mountains of Central Asia and the borders of China in the east. In the process they had completely crushed one great empire (the old empire of Byzantium), and hollowed out another (that of the Iranian Sassanids). The Arab Conquests represent one of the greatest feats of arms in history and utterly changed the world. Justin Marozzi, much-praised author of The Man Who Invented History and Baghdad: City of Peace, City of Blood, tells their story with unfailing narrative verve and deep scholarly authority.2021 Head of Zeus

In Voyagers, the distinguished anthropologist Nick Thomas charts the course of the seaborne migrations that populated the islands between the Americas and the western coast of Asia from late prehistory onwards: firstly the colonization by speakers of Austronesian languages of the western Pacific littoral, from around 3000 BC, of the Philippines, Indonesia, Micronesia and Melanesia; followed by the later settlement, by Polynesian peoples, of Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Tahiti, the Marquesas, Easter Island and eventually New Zealand, up to AD 1250. Alongside a compelling narrative of this remarkable sequence of long-distance migrations, Nick Thomas describes the sea-going technologies that allowed these epic voyages to take place; the nature of the cultures that embarked on them; and the societies that emerged across Oceania in their wake.2020 Head of Zeus Ltd