I bought a used copy of John Julius Norwich’s ‘Byzantium: The Early Centuries’ at a Hudson Public Library book sale a while back, hauling it and other dusty two-buck specials back to my house, where it proceeded to sit for years on an unread book pile in my home office. (Yes, a book pile, not a bookcase.) I can’t say I had buyer’s regret, not at $2, but I did feel a little guilty every time I walked past the book pile and there staring up at me was the mosaic portrait of Emperor Justinian on the cover of ‘Byzantium,’ as if beseeching me to give the poor book a chance. “I don’t know why I bought you,” I’d think. “I’m never going to read you. Not at 800 pages.” … But, of course, I eventually did, after one day forcing myself to read Norwich’s introduction in which he charmingly admits he was once a Byzantine Empire dolt like the rest of us and wanted to write a book spreading the word about an underappreciated period in Western history.

And it’s all there:  Emperor Diocletian’s division of the Roman Empire into East and West, the rise of Constantine the Great, the First Council of Nicaea and the emergence of modern Christianity, the long and critical reign of Justinian I, the transformation of a small outpost city into a magnificent capital of an empire that lasted more than 1,100 years.

For an 800-page book published in 1988, ‘Byzantium’ is a remarkably easy read, a true “popular history” that the late Sir John Julius Norwich was apparently known for over the course of his career. All these years after its publication and then sitting on my book pile, I can definitely recommend it to others, particularly to fellow book hounds who head straight to the history/biography tables at local library book sales. I’m not sure when, or if, I’ll ever tackle the other books in his Byzantine trilogy. But it was satisfying knocking off at least one of them.