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The Spartans of ancient Greece are typically portrayed as macho heroes: noble, laconic, totally fearless, and impervious to pain. And indeed, they often lived up to this image. But life was not as simple as this image suggests. In truth, ancient Sparta was a city of contrasts.

In his retelling of a Chinese history stretching back 5,000 years, author and China-expert Jonathan Clements focuses on the human stories which led to the powerful transformations in Chinese society - from the unification of China under its first emperor, Qinshi Huangdi, to the Mongol invasion under Genghis Khan and the consolidation of Communist rule under Mao Zedong. Clements even brings listeners through to the present day, outlining China's economic renaissance under Deng Xiaoping and Xi Jinping.

Towards the middle of the third century BC, the Hellenistic kingdoms were near their peak. In terms of population, economy, and military power, each was vastly superior to Rome, not to mention in fields such as medicine, architecture, science, philosophy, and literature. But over the next two and a half centuries, Rome would eventually conquer these kingdoms while adopting so much of Hellenistic culture that the resultant hybrid is known as "Graeco-Roman." In Greece Against Rome, Philip Matyszak relates this epic tale from the Hellenistic perspective.

At its height in 660 BCE, the kingdom of Assyria stretched from the Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf. It was the first empire the world had ever seen. Here, historian Eckart Frahm tells the epic story of Assyria and its formative role in global history. Assyria’s wide-ranging conquests have long been known from the Hebrew Bible and later Greek accounts. But nearly two centuries of research now permit a rich picture of the Assyrians and their empire beyond the battlefield.

The year is 104 A.D. Two years have passed since King Decebalus knelt in submission to Emperor Trajan. The recent war between Rome and Dacia was brutal and costly for both sides. The graves of many thousands lie between the River Danube and the gates of Sarmizegetusa.

The year 146 BC marked the brutal end to the Roman Republic's 118-year struggle for the western Mediterranean. Breaching the walls of their great enemy, Carthage, Roman troops slaughtered countless citizens, enslaved those who survived, and leveled the 700-year-old city. That same year in the east, Rome destroyed Corinth and subdued Greece. Over little more than a century, Rome's triumphant armies of citizen-soldiers had shocked the world by conquering all of its neighbors.

Discover the secrets of history’s most formidable fighters in “Preparing for WAR: The Training of History’s Top Warriors” by James Pieratt. This groundbreaking book offers an unprecedented look into the physical and mental disciplines that forged legendary warriors across the world over thousands of years. From the sweat-soaked sands of the Colosseum to the unforgiving terrain of Sparta, embark on an EPIC journey through time and culture.

More than 2,000 years ago one of the greatest military leaders in history almost destroyed Rome. Hannibal, a daring African general from the city of Carthage, led an army of warriors and battle elephants over the snowy Alps to invade the very heart of Rome's growing empire. But what kind of person would dare to face the most relentless imperial power of the ancient world? How could Hannibal, consistently outnumbered and always deep in enemy territory, win battle after battle until he held the very fate of Rome within his grasp?

Jack Dawe is an unconventional street cop. His ability to not act or look like a "Copper" enabled him to infiltrate the drug networks of the UK. This no-holds-barred, explosive, and, at times, humorous account of undercover policing takes the listener through a journey of crime, violence, and deception. This memoir is a true story of poacher turned game keeper. A veteran of 30 years’ service as a soldier and police officer, Jack reveals how he grew from a young thief into a soldier in search of danger and adventure across the world.

A joint biography that investigates how, during their lifetimes, Philip and Alexander transformed Macedon from a weak kingdom into a globe-spanning empire. During his short life Alexander the Great carved out an empire stretching from the Balkans to Central India, re-drawing the map of the ancient world. Yet Alexander represents only half of the story, for his success was not just the product of his own genius, restless energy and ambition, but was built on decades of effort by his father.

The last and longest war of classical antiquity was fought in the early seventh century. It was ideologically charged and fought along the full length of the Persian-Roman frontier, drawing in all the available resources and great powers of the steppe world. The conflict raged on an unprecedented scale, and its end brought the classical phase of history to a close. Despite all this, it has left a conspicuous gap in the history of warfare. This book aims to finally fill that gap.

Julius Caesar is one of the most famous figures of the ancient Roman world. A skillful general and leading politician of the late Roman Republic, he secured a 10-year proconsular command in the province of Gaul, during which he accumulated both wealth and power. A core text in the teaching of Latin in schools, The Gallic War gives a unique insight into this remarkable man, as well as military strategy and practice of the day.

Julius Caesar and Pompey the Great were two of the greatest generals Rome had ever produced. Together they had brought vast stretches of territory under Roman dominion. In 49 BC they turned against each other and plunged Rome into civil war. In this audiobook, Adrian Goldsworthy relates the gripping story of this desperate power struggle. Drawing on original accounts of the war, he examines how legion was pitched against legion in a vicious battle for political domination of the vast Roman world.

In the thirteenth century BC, a quarter of a century before the Trojan War, seven Greek warrior heroes went against the Greek city of Thebes to restore one of their number to the throne of his father, the famous King Oedipus. Several children of those seven heroes would later take part in the siege of Troy. This adventure was equal in the minds of Greeks and Romans with the siege of Troy as told in Homer’s epic The Iliad, an event which it predated by a generation.

In this, the first prose history in European civilization, Herodotus describes the growth of the Persian Empire with force, authority, and style. Perhaps most famously, the book tells the heroic tale of the Greeks' resistance to the vast invading force assembled by Xerxes, king of Persia. Here are not only the great battles - Marathon, Thermopylae, and Salamis - but also penetrating human insight and a powerful sense of epic destiny at work.

Since the reign of Emperor Tiberius, an uneasy peace has existed along the Danube frontier between the various Sarmatian tribal kingdoms to the north and the Roman Empire to the south. Now, a new threat has emerged in Dacia, as the aged King Duras seeks to unite his people; a feat not witnessed since the legendary King Burebista more than a century before.

In the year 493, the leader of a vast confederation of Gothic warriors, their wives, and children personally cut down Odoacer, the man famous for deposing the last Roman emperor in 476. That leader became Theoderic the Great (454-526). This engaging history of his life and reign immerses listeners in the world of the warrior-king who ushered in decades of peace and stability in Italy as king of Goths and Romans.

Hadrian's Wall is the largest and one of the most enigmatic historical monuments in Britain. Nothing else approaches its vast scale: a land wall running seventy-three miles from east to west and a sea wall stretching at least twenty-six miles down the Cumbrian coast. Many of its forts are as large as Britain's most formidable medieval castles, and the wide ditch dug to the south of the Wall, the vallum, is larger than any surviving prehistoric earthwork.

In Mortal Republic, prize-winning historian Edward J. Watts offers a new history of the fall of the Roman Republic that explains why Rome exchanged freedom for autocracy. For centuries, even as Rome grew into the Mediterranean's premier military and political power, its governing institutions, parliamentary rules, and political customs successfully fostered negotiation and compromise. By the 130s BC, however, Rome's leaders increasingly used these same tools to cynically pursue individual gain and obstruct their opponents.

The Roman army was the greatest fighting machine the ancient world produced. The Roman Empire depended on soldiers not just to win its wars, defend its frontiers and control the seas but also to act as the engine of the state. Roman legionaries and auxiliaries came from across the Roman world and beyond. They served as tax collectors, policemen, surveyors, as civil engineers and, if they survived, in retirement, as civic worthies, craftsmen and politicians. Some even rose to become emperors.