Byzantium - John Julius Norwich

Norwich's three volume history of the Byzantine Empire is, by all accounts, the best around, despite his protestations that it really isn't history in the research sense - it's just telling the story.  My copy is the gorgeous Folio edition shown to the left - and if any book deserved the Folio treatment, it is this one.  It has taken me well over a year to read the whole thing, and while the various emperors ran together a bit, overall it really gave you a sense of the enormous significance of what is referred to, if at all, as simply the "Eastern Roman Empire".  Well, it wasn't - it was the Roman Empire, and lasted almost a thousand years after the last emperor in Rome was deposed.  If you can only read one work on the Byzantine Empire )okay, three) this is the one, without a doubt.