The Forgotten Byzantine Empire Chapter Summary

The author of Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization is Lars Brownworth. He was a history and political science high school teacher at Stony Brook School in Stony Brook on Long Island, New York. He created 50 podcast about 12 Byzantine Rulers. He resigned at teaching to write this book. This was his first book he wrote. He wrote many other books after this one. He has a blog that he responds to people who have questions about history. He is married to a woman named Catherine Tipmore and lives in Maryland now. Brownworth’s book started off talking about the foundation of the Empire. He discussed how Constantine founded Constantinople and claimed it as the New Rome. He married a Catholic women …show more content…
This book gives a voice to the Byzantine Empire that is so often forgotten. He went about doing this in a smart way. He talked about the foundation and the high points of the empire. Then he talked about the empire decline and everything that happened there. While he was discussing the Byzantine Empire, he would relate it back to some of the things that were going on in the West. When he ended the book, he explained how what went on in the Byzantine Empire affected the rest of the world. Some of his comments he made were that by the Byzantine fighting the Islam religion, they were able to delay them from expanding to the West until the West developed enough to stop the Muslims. Another point was that the last part of the Roman Empire was extinguished, but the easterners went West while bringing lost jewels of Greek and Roman civilization. The West was just getting started in humanism, so they gladly accepted the gifts. The other habitants from the Byzantine Empire went north to Russia. There they helped Russia flourish because Russia used the Byzantine alphabet and had the eastern soul. Russia to this day still mistrusts the West because of how they treated the Eastern Empire. Brownworth then talked about since the Turks captured Constantinople that it stopped trade routes for the West. There the West started their sailing expeditions to start new trade …show more content…
I thought it was extremely informative and the author did a great job at keeping me intrigued. There were parts where the story was boring but he did a good job at putting in something that interesting happened to allow the book to pick back up. Some of the points I thought were interesting was how the families acted towards each other. One spot in the book it talked about after Constantine died, he did not say who would rule next. His three sons then thought they should all be rulers. One of the sons ended up killing any relative that had any drop of Constantine’s blood. There was only one survivor, and he was a 5 year old boy. That 5 year old boy ended up becoming the ruler of Byzantine. I found that really interesting. Another interesting fact was there was an emperor that did not like that his son was gaining fame. Because of this, he spread a rumor that his son was having a relationship with his wife. He ended up having both of them killed. It amazed me at how a family can so easily kill one another especially when it comes to power. The book discussed strategies that some of the emperors had against people who were conspiring to take power. It also had strategies for the conspirators to overtake the emperor. I found that interesting because it allowed me to attempt to understand both sides and why they wanted to rule. Another thing I found interesting was how the Byzantines dealt with the Black Plague before it ever hit Europe. The Black