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For over three thousand years, the Mediterranean Sea has been among the great centres of civilization. David Abulafia’s The Great Sea may be the first complete background of the Mediterranean, from your erection of temples on Malta around 3500 BC to contemporary tourism. Varying across time and the complete extraordinary space from the Mediterranean from Gibraltar to Jaffa, Genoa to Tunis, and bringing to life pilgrims, pirates, sultans and naval commanders, this is actually the story of the ocean that has designed much of world history.

© Dabid Abulafia 2011 (P) Penguin Sound 2020