In the Western mind, Afghanistan has come to mean many things in recent decades, most of them bad. Partly thanks to the relentless media coverage of the “War on Terror”, it has become synonymous above all with war and terrorism – from the Taliban to Al Qaeda and the so-called Islamic State – crushing levels of poverty and immiseration. In ways which would have been familiar to both Herodotus in the fourth century BC and Ibn Khaldun in the fourteenth AD, it has also come to represent the latest testing ground for imperial hubris and overexpansion, another tomb in the “graveyard of empires”. This is an extraordinarily reductive and one-dimensional portrait of a nation. Afghanistan is, and always has been, vastly more interesting than that. Its long and tumultuous history at the centre of the world, at the heart of cultural exchanges between East and West, encompasses high culture, low politics, domestic dynasties, international adventures, Great Power rivalry and a completely compelling vein of skulduggery. This anthology will celebrate this rich, engrossing heritage with a captivating blend of history and geography, religion and culture, politics and poetry, drama and memoir, home-grown fiction and the self-serving literature of invaders. It will celebrate Afghan voices as much as those of foreigners who, for better or worse, have been bewitched by this staggeringly beautiful mountain kingdom.

'"In one of Tripoli's only English-language bookshops I picked up the book that thrust the desert before me in all its guises. Here was silence and loneliness, the glory of wide African skies, unbroken plains of sand and rock, loyalty and companionship, adventure treachery and betrayal."'

For six years after reading the account of the British North African expedition of 1818-20, Justin Marozzi had longed to cross the Libyan Sahara. Captivated by the beauty of this little-known country on his first visit to Tripoli, he vowed to return to explore its vast desert along the old slave-trade routes. 'South from Barbary' – as nineteenth century Europeans knew North Africa – is the compelling story of his 1,500 – mile journey.

Setting off from Tripoli, Marozzi and his travelling companion, Ned, headed first to the ancient oasis of Ghadames on an improbable mission to purchase camels and find a guide willing to forego the comforts of a four-wheel drive for the hardship of an extended camel trek. Marozzi and Ned had never travelled in the desert, nor had they ridden camels before embarking on this expedition. Encouraged by a series of idiosyncratic Touareg and Tubbu guides, they learnt the full range of desert survival skills, including how to master their five faithful camels.

The caravan of two explorers, five camels with distinctive personalites and their guides undertook a gruelling journey across some of the most inhospitable territory on earth. Despite threats from Libyan officialdom and the ancient natural hardships of the desert, Marozzi and Ned found themselves growing ever closer to the land and its people.

More than a travelogue, 'South from Barbary' is a fascinating history of Saharan exploration and efforts by early British explorers to suppress the African slave trade. It evokes the poetry and solitude of the desert, the companionship of man and beast, the plight of a benighted nation, and the humour and generosity of its resilient people.

In the 7th and 8th centuries AD, armies inspired by the new religion of Islam burst out of Arabia to subjugate the Levant, southwest Asia, North Africa and the Iberian peninsula. These Arab conquests followed immediately after the Prophet Mohammed's death in 632. By this time, against all the odds, he had managed to unite the feuding tribes of Arabia at the point of his sword. The Muslim conquests lasted until 750, by which time several generations of marauding Arab armies had carved out an Islamic empire (the Umayyad empire, centred on Baghdad) which, in size and population, rivalled that of Rome at its zenith, extending from the shores of the Atlantic in the west to the snow-bounds mountains of Central Asia and the borders of China in the east. In the process they had completely crushed one great empire (the old empire of Byzantium), and hollowed out another (that of the Iranian Sassanids). The Arab Conquests represent one of the greatest feats of arms in history and utterly changed the world. Justin Marozzi, much-praised author of The Man Who Invented History and Baghdad: City of Peace, City of Blood, tells their story with unfailing narrative verve and deep scholarly authority.

'Outstanding, illuminating, compelling ... a riveting read' Peter Frankopan, Sunday Times Islamic civilization was once the envy of the world. From a succession of glittering, cosmopolitan capitals, Islamic empires lorded it over the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia and swathes of the Indian subcontinent. For centuries the caliphate was both ascendant on the battlefield and triumphant in the battle of ideas, its cities unrivalled powerhouses of artistic grandeur, commercial power, spiritual sanctity and forward-looking thinking. Islamic Empires is a history of this rich and diverse civilization told through its greatest cities over fifteen centuries, from the beginnings of Islam in Mecca in the seventh century to the astonishing rise of Doha in the twenty-first. It dwells on the most remarkable dynasties ever to lead the Muslim world - the Abbasids of Baghdad, the Umayyads of Damascus and Cordoba, the Merinids of Fez, the Ottomans of Istanbul, the Mughals of India and the Safavids of Isfahan - and some of the most charismatic leaders in Muslim history, from Saladin in Cairo and mighty Tamerlane of Samarkand to the poet-prince Babur in his mountain kingdom of Kabul and the irrepressible Maktoum dynasty of Dubai. It focuses on these fifteen cities at some of the defining moments in Islamic history: from the Prophet Mohammed receiving his divine revelations in Mecca and the First Crusade of 1099 to the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 and the phenomenal creation of the merchant republic of Beirut in the nineteenth century.

Over thirteen centuries, Baghdad has enjoyed both cultural and commercial pre-eminence, boasting artistic and intellectual sophistication and an economy once the envy of the world. It was here, in the time of the Caliphs, that the Thousand and One Nights were set. Yet it has also been a city of great hardships, beset by epidemics, famines, floods, and numerous foreign invasions which have brought terrible bloodshed. This is the history of its storytellers and its tyrants, of its philosophers and conquerors. Here, in the first new history of Baghdad in nearly 80 years, Justin Marozzi brings to life the whole tumultuous history of what was once the greatest capital on earth.

Herodotus is known as the Father of History, but he was much more than that. He was also the world's first travel writer, a pioneering geographer, anthropologist, explorer, moralist, tireless investigative reporter and enlightened multiculturalist before the word existed. He was at once learned professor and tabloid journalist, with an unfailing eye for fabulous material to inform and amuse, to titillate, horrify and entertain. In his masterpiece the Histories, tall stories of dog-headed men, gold-digging ants and flying snakes jostle for space within a mesmerising narrative of the Persian Wars, from which Greece emerged triumphant in 5BC to give birth to Western civilisation. Using the effervescent and profoundly modern Herodotus as his guiding light, Justin Marozzi takes the reader back to his world with eclectic travels to Greece, Turkey, Egypt and war-torn Iraq.

Intrepid travel historian Justin Marozzi retraces the footsteps of Herodotus through the Mediterranean and Middle East, examining Herodotus's 2,500-year-old observations about the cultures and places he visited and finding echoes of his legacy reverberating to this day. "The Way of Herodotus" is a lively yet thought-provoking excursion into the world of Herodotus, with the man who invented history ever present, guiding the narrative with his discursive spirit.