Roger Crowley Books In Order

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Roger Crowley
Roger Crowley was born in the year 1951, and is a British author and historian that is known for his books on Mediterranean and maritime history.

He was educated at Sherborne School before reading English at Emmanuel College Cambridge. The child of a naval family, his early experiences of life in Malta gave him a deep interest in the culture and history of the Mediterranean world, which has stayed a major subject of his work.

Roger’s particular interests are in the Venetian, Ottoman, Portuguese, and Byzantine empires. As a result of this, he has penned a loose trilogy of books about the Mediterranean’s history. They are: “Constaninople: The Last Great Siege” (for which he drew on his interest in Istanbul), “Empires of the Sea”, and “City of Fortune”.

He has taught English in Istanbul, walked across Western Turkey, and traveled widely in the Greek-speaking world. He has also traveled from Portugal and Spain to the Black Sea.

Roger worked for many years in the publishing world before he pursued a full-time writing career. He is married and lives in the Gloucestershire countryside, located in England.

He has a reputation for penning page-turning narrative history that is based on eyewitness accounts and original sources combined with careful scholarship. Roger’s works have been translated into over twenty languages.

Roger has talked to audiences as diverse as Melvin Bragg’s BBC program “In Our Time”, NATO, the National Maritime Museum, the Hay Festival, and the Center for Analyses in Washington. He has also written reviews and articles, appeared on television programs, and even traveled as far as China in order to give lectures.

“Empires of the Sea” was a New York Times Bestseller and a Sunday Times (UK) History Book of the Year in the year 2009.

“1453: The Holy War for Constantinople and the Clash of Islam and the West” is a non-fiction book that was released in 2005. An enthralling exploration of Constantinople’s fall and its ties to the world that we live in today.

Constantinople’s fall in the year 1453 signaled a shift in history, and marked the end of the Byzantium Empire. This comprehensive accounting of the battle between Constantine XI (the 57th emperor of Byzantium) and Mehmed II (the Ottoman Empire’s sultan) illuminates the period in history that was a precursor the current jihad that exists between the Middle East and the West.

“Empires of the Sea: The Final Battle for the Mediterranean, 1521-1580” is a non-fiction book that was released in 2008. This book shows the Mediterranean as a bloody theater of war and to be majestic.

It opens with the Ottoman victory in the year 1453, this book tells the story of Barbary pirates, military crusading, white slavery, and the Ottoman Empire. As well as the larger picture of the struggles between Christianity and Islam.

“City of Fortune: How Venice Won and Lost a Naval Empire” is a non-fiction book that was released in 2011. This magisterial work of captivating history tells the story of the Venetian ascent from lagoon dwellers to the greatest power in all the Mediterranean, one epic five century voyage that encompassed trade and crusade, colonial adventure and sea battles, and plague.

In Venice the path to empire unfolded in a series of rather extraordinary contests: the sacking of Constantinople in 1204, the battle to the finish with Genoa and one rather desperate defense against the Turks. Underneath the lion banner of St Mark, she created one empire of naval bases and ports that funneled the goods of the entire world through its wharfs.

In the process the city wound up becoming the richest place on the planet, a brilliant mosaic that was fashioned from what it traded, stole, bought, and borrowed. Based on first hand accounts of seafaring and piracy, warfare and trade and the places that the Venetians sailed to and died, the book is narrative history at its absolute finest.

Starting on Ascension Day in 1000 and concluding with an epic explosion just off the coast of Greece. There is also the calamitous news that the Portuguese just pioneered a sea route right to India. It is sure to fascinate anybody that loves the Mediterranean world and Venice.

“Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire” is a non-fiction book that was released in 2015. Columbus and the conquistador expeditions are remarkable, for sure, however the history of Portuguese exploration has all but been forgotten. However Portugal’s navigators cracked the code of the Atlantic winds, which were launched by the expedition of Vasco de Gama to India and beat the Spanish to all the spice kingdoms in the East. Then they set about to create the very first long-range maritime empire.

In one surprising blitz of three decades, a handful of simply ruthless and visionary empire builders, with meager resources but some breathtaking ambition, tried seizing the Indian Ocean, take control of world trade and destroy Islam.

This is a tale of money, trade and technology, religious zealotry, navigation, shipwrecks and sea battles, political espionage and diplomacy, courage and horrifying brutality, and endurance. It brings to life the exploits of one incredible band of conquerors. Guys like Afonso de Albuquerque, the first European (since Alexander the Great) to found an Asian empire and who set in motion five centuries worth of European colonization and unleashed forces of globalization.

“Accursed Tower: The Fall of Acre and the End of the Crusades” is a non-fiction book that was released in 2019. This is about the final Christian stronghold fell to the Muslim army during the siege of Acre in 1291.

The 1291 siege of Acre was like the Alamo of the Christian Crusades, the last bloody battle for the Holy Land. After six desperate weeks, the beleaguered citadel surrendered to the Mamluks, which brought an end to Christendom’s two century long adventure in the Middle East.

Roger draws on some Arabic sources along with untranslated Latin documents to write this book. He argues that Acre is noteworthy for its technical advances in siege warfare and military planning, and is rather extraordinary for its brutal butchery and individual heroism.