Description: "This is a remarkable book: at once the dramatic story of a truly extraordinary man and a masterclass in the practice of history from a superlative historian. Janet Nelson's brilliant insight illuminates a world that is both familiar and strange, and full of resonances between past and present. Here--seen through challenging sources, sifted and weighed with wisdom and wit--is everything we can know, twelve centuries on, about the king and emperor called Charlemagne."--Helen Castor, author of She-Wolves and Joan of Arc
"An imaginative, deeply thoughtful, often provocative, always important book."--Geoffrey Koziol, Professor of History at UC BerkeleyReview Quotes: "A deeply learned and humane portrait of Charlemagne, a man who wielded supreme power in much of Europe three centuries after the fall of Rome. . . . Nelson's King and Emperor brings alive the age of Charlemagne, the ruler usually associated with the first effort after the fall of Rome to unite Europe under a single rule. This 'new life' is a bold book. . . . Each chapter is a masterclass in tracing specific bodies of evidence back to the persons or incidents from which they arose. . . . King and Emperor is a masterpiece of historical writing and a robust step toward filling the gap in our historical imagination left by the passing of Rome."-- "New York Review of Books"