Synopsis
For over four thousand years the Mediterranean was the center of Western civilization. Historically, it has been meeting place of the cultures of Europe, Asia, and Africa, the battleground of races and nations, and the focus of three great religions: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.

David Abulafia has brought together a team of eight specialists from many countries to tell this story as a connected narrative: from a description of the physical setting, the prehistoric traders, and the struggle between Phoenicians, Greeks, and Etruscans ending in Roman victory, to a discussion of the post-Roman nations, the Christian powers in the north, the Islamic powers in the south, the domination by England and France, and, finally, the twentieth century, divided between war and mass tourism.