Plague, Empire and the Birth of Europe

Justinian's Flea

Popular history at its best: an epic story in which the newly united Roman Empire under Justinian is decimated by bubonic plague.

William Rosen doesn´t just give us the most believable, the most human and the most fully rounded Justinian ever, he also conjures up a vivid picture of the age, in a compelling style that makes his weighty learning light

Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, author of Millennium and Civilizations

Ambitious and learned...readers will be swept along by the strong current of Mr Rosen's good natured erudition

A massively ambitious work that covers a great deal of ground..... a splendid biography of the emperor Justinian

Assertively modern in language and attitude, Rosen's multi-disciplinary Byzantine history deals not only with fatal microbiology but also celebrates Justinian's major achievements

As a feat of scholarship alone this book is extraordinary, but what really impresses is the sense of ease its author manifests in whatever subject he enters. It's as if he had been granted the freedom of late antiquity at birth ... His eloquence, wit, narrative skill, learning and (one dares to add) compassion, hoist this book abouve the miasma of its deeply sombre subject and make it, strangely, a joy

Justinan was, as Rosen engagingly sets out, a master statesman.... Rosen carefully weighs his contribution

William Rosen was a senior executive at Macmillan and Simon &amp; Schuster publishing houses for more than twenty-five years, working with authors including Bernard Lewis, Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Philip Craig and Tim Clayton, Marina Benjamin, and Robert Lacey. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

In the middle of the sixth century, the world's smallest organism collided with the world's mightiest empire. With the death of twenty-five million people, the Roman Empire, under her last great emperor, Justinian, was decimated. Before Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that carries bubonic plague, was finished, both the Roman and Persian empires were easy pickings for the armies of Muhammad on their conquering march out of Arabia. In its wake, the plague - history's first pandemic - marked the transition from the age of Mediterranean empires to the age of European nation-states - from antiquity to the medieval world. 
 
A narrative history that melds contemporary sources with modern disciplines, Justinian's Flea is a unique account of one of history's great turning points - the summer of 542 - revealed through the experiences of the remarkable individuals whose lives are a window onto a remarkable age: Justinian, his general Belisarius, the greatest soldier between Caesar and Saladin; his architect, Anthemius who built Constantinople's Hagia Sophia (and whose brother, Alexander, was the great physician of the plague years); Tribonian, the jurist who created the Justinianic Code; and, finally, his empress Theodora, the one-time prostitute who became co-ruler of the empire, the most politically powerful woman in European history until Elizabeth I.

William Rosen

As a piston-driven primer not only to the processes of thought, labour and collaborative generosity of the fathers of steam, this book runs along a new track like - well, like a Rocket

Its scope and lively intelligence make it the best kind of popular account. Anyone who has ever wondered over Britain's exceptional contribution to the modern world should read it

Intriguing, witty account of the birth of steam power

Infectiously enthusiastic, all encompassing investigation of steam power and the men that drove the industrial revolution... A particularly fascinating account of the tangled relationship between iron, coal and steam

An enjoyable read... Wonderfully eclectic

Rosen is skilled at hooking small, local phenomena into a narrative of global sweep and significance

A Story of Steam, Industry and Invention

'The most important invention in the whole of the Industrial Revolution was invention itself.' 
 
Those words are at the heart of this remarkable book - a history of the Industrial Revolution and the steam engine, as well as an account of how inventors first came to own and profit from their ideas and how invention itself springs forth from logic and imagination. 
 
Rocket. It was the fortuitously named train that inaugurated steam locomotion in 1829, jump-starting two centuries of mass transportation. As William Rosen reveals, it was the product of centuries of scientific and industrial discovery. From inventor Heron of Alexandria in AD 60 to James Watt, the physicist whose 'separate condenser' was central to the development of steam power - all those who made possible the long ride towards the Industrial Revolution are brought to life. 
 
But crucial to their contributions are other characters whose concepts allowed their invention to flourish - John Locke and intellectual property; Edward Coke and patents. Along the way, Rosen takes us deep into the human mind, explaining how 'eureka' moments occur - when the brain is most relaxed.

William Rosen

Praise for The Most Powerful Idea in the World

As a piston-driven primer not only to the processes of thought, labour and collaborative generosity of the fathers of steam, this book runs along a new track like - well, like a Rocket

Its scope and lively intelligence make it the best kind of popular account. Anyone who has ever wondered over Britain's exceptional contribution to the modern world should read it

Intriguing, witty account of the birth of steam power

As a piston-driven primer not only to the processes of thought, labour and collaborative generosity of the fathers of steam, this book runs along a new track like - well, like a Rocket

Its scope and lively intelligence make it the best kind of popular account. Anyone who has ever wondered over Britain's exceptional contribution to the modern world should read it

Intriguing, witty account of the birth of steam power

As a piston-driven primer not only to the processes of thought, labour and collaborative generosity of the fathers of steam, this book runs along a new track like - well, like a Rocket

Its scope and lively intelligence make it the best kind of popular account. Anyone who has ever wondered over Britain's exceptional contribution to the modern world should read it

Intriguing, witty account of the birth of steam power

Books by William Rosen

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter