Perched at the tip of Europe, gazing across to the shores of Asia, Istanbul remains as much a city of crossroads as it has been for the past two millennia. The history of this fabled metropolis--known at first as Byzantion, then Constantinople, and now Istanbul--is glorious, grandiose, and astounding. No other city has stood at the center of world events for so long, a home to great empires and diverse cultures from the Greeks to the Romans, the Italians...

"In New Rome, Paul Stephenson looks beyond traditional texts and well-known artifacts to offer a novel, scientifically-minded interpretation of antiquity's end. It turns out that the descent of Rome is inscribed not only in parchments but also in ice cores and DNA. From these and other sources, we learn that pollution and pandemics influenced the fate of Constantinople and the Eastern Roman Empire. During its final five centuries, the empire in the...