Books by Eamonn Gearon

Eamonn Gearon, 2011

The Sahara is an environment unlike any other on the face of the earth. Replete with myths and fiction, it is a wild land dotted with oases and camel trains trudging through sand dunes that roll like the waves on a sea as far as the distant horizon. Conquered and Cursed: from the 50,000-strong army of Cambyses, swallowed in a sandstorm in the sixth century BC, to the US Marines' first foreign engagement; Hannibal and his elephants, Caesar against Anthony and Cleopatra, Alexander the Great, the armies of Islam, Napoleon, and Rommel versus Monty. Myths and Mysteries: from whales in the White Desert to the arrival of camels in the Great Sand Sea; chariots of the gods and colonialists' motor cars. Artists, Writers, and Filmmakers: from the ancient rock art of the Tassili frescoes to the modernism of Matisse and Klee; from Ibn Battuta to Paul Bowles; from Beau Geste's French Foreign Legion to Star Wars.

Eamonn Gearon, 2015

Thirty-six lectures unfurl a breathtaking panorama of history, exploring a 1,300-year window from the rise of the warrior prophet Muhammad to the fall of the Ottoman Empire after World War I. Each lecture focuses on a specific moment that changed the direction of events or the narrative of history, such as the Battle of Karbala, and the definitive Sunni and Shia split; the rise of the Persian Safavids, the Egyptian Mamluks, and the Ottomans, and its breakup after the First World War, and the emergence of the modern states of the Middle East. The stories you'll discover here are as dazzling as anything in the Arabian Nights and are all the more astonishing for being true.

Eamonn Gearon, 2016

The study of Western Civilization traditionally follows a well-known but incomplete arc: the grand achievements of Greece and Rome, several hundred years of the Dark Ages, and then the bright emergence of the European Renaissance. But amid the “dark” Middle Ages, the Abbasid Empire, which ruled the Middle East as well as much of Northern Africa and Central Asia from 750 to 1258, serves as a vitally important but often overlooked bridge between the ancient and modern worlds. The History and Achievements of the Islamic Golden Age is your chance to get to know the story and the accomplishments of this great period in human civilization. Taught by acclaimed lecturer Eamonn Gearon, these 24 remarkable lectures offer brilliant insights into an era too often overlooked by traditional history textbooks. You'll meet a wealth of scholars, scientists, poets, and philosophers who paved the way for the Renaissance and continue to affect our world in surprising ways.