Empires and Barbarians: The Fall of Rome and the Birth of Europe

Empires and Barbarians presents a fresh, provocative look at how a recognizable Europe came into being in the first millennium AD. With sharp analytic insight, Peter Heather explores the dynamics of migration and social and economic interaction that changed two vastly different worlds—the undeveloped barbarian world and the sophisticated Roman Empire—into remarkably similar societies and states.

The book's vivid narrative begins at the time of Christ, when the Mediterranean circ…