The New Roman Empire: A History of Byzantium
by Anthony Kaldellis
No one talks about curating one’s reading list.
In the long run, I’m writing (or hoping to write) a book about information, computation, and understanding. One part of that is Byzantium. What we know about antiquity, we chiefly know because Byzantium managed to preserve it, and how they managed that is part of the history of information. I know very little about Byzantium, and this is a fine and detailed history.
But Byzantium spanned a millennium and change between Diocletian and Constantine XI Paileologos, and this book is a veritable brick, and the world is changing around us. It always is, of course, but AI: you can talk to machines! It’s a fairy tale worthy of Pandamus or Grimm!