Donald E. Queller was Professor of History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; among his other books are The Office of the Ambassador in the Middle Ages and The Venetian Patriciate: Reality Versus Myth. Thomas F. Madden is Associate Professor of History at St. Louis University.

"A masterful, up-to-date revision, which has taken a classic to an even higher level of historical inquiry and subtlety."-James Ross Sweeney, Pennsylvania State University"As a work of scholarship the new edition is a considerable achievement since it has taken a classic and made it even better."-Nottingham Medieval Studies"The narrative is crisp; the vignettes of individuals, illuminating; and the overall grasp of action, masterful, whether describing the first terrifying assault of the Venetian ships or analyzing the complex power structure in the Byzantine court."-Grover A. Zinn, Jr., Church History, in a review of the first edition"Strongly argued and well-documented."-The Historian