1453: The Holy War for Constantinople and the Clash of Islam and the West - Roger Crowley

Written by Roger Crowley
Read by Simon Prebble
Format: M4B
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Uploader’s note: ripped from a private tracker. The original release notes have been preserved.

A gripping exploration of the fall of Constantinople and its connection to the world we live in today.

The fall of Constantinople in 1453 signaled a shift in history and the end of the Byzantium Empire. Roger Crowley’s comprehensive account of the battle between Mehmet II, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, and Constantine XI, the 57th emperor of Byzantium, illuminates the period in history that was a precursor to the current conflict between the West and the Middle East.

For a thousand years Constantinople was quite simply “the city” fabulously wealthy, imperial, intimidating–and Christian. Singlehandedly it blunted early Arab enthusiasm for Holy War. When a second wave of Islamic warriors swept out of the Asian steppes in the Middle Ages, Constantinople was the ultimate prize: “The Red Apple.” It was a city that had always lived under threat. On average it had survived a siege every forty years for a millennium–until the Ottoman Sultan, Mehmet II, twenty-one years old and hungry for glory, rode up to the walls in April 1453 with a huge army, “numberless as the stars.”

1453 is the taut, vivid story of this final struggle for the city, told largely through the accounts of eyewitnesses. For fifty-five days a tiny group of defenders defied the huge Ottoman army in a seesawing contest fought on land, at sea, and underground. 1453 is both a gripping work of narrative history and an account of the war between Christendom and Islam that still has echoes in the modern world.

About the Author
Roger Crowley was born in England and studied English at Cambridge University. After university, he taught English in Istanbul where he developed his interest in the city and its history. He has traveled widely throughout Turkey, including three journeys on foot across Western Anatolia, and has a working knowledge of Turkish. For the past fifteen years he has worked as a successful educational publisher for Nelson Thornes in Cheltenham, England.

Simon Prebble, a British-born performer, is a stage and television actor and veteran narrator of some three hundred audiobooks. As one of AudioFile’s Golden Voices, he has received thirty-seven Earphones Awards and won the prestigious Audie in 2010. He lives in New York.

JOKER666 CONVERSION NOTE
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Thank You @Hetaira this would not be possible without you.

TITLE……: 1453: The Holy War for Constantinople and the Clash of Islam and the West
AUTHOR…..: Roger Crowley
NARRATOR…: Simon Prebble
YEAR…….: 2016
ASIN…….: 1478914343
PUBLISHER..: Blackstone Audio
EDITION….: Unabridged
SOURCE…..: Audio CD
AUDIO……: MPEG Layer III, 64kbps CBR, Joint Stereo, 44.1kHz
DURATION…: 10 h 56 min
PROCESS….: Audio CD source converted for archival audiobook use and assembled into a single chapterized M4B container.
ENCODE…..: MPEG Layer III, 64kbps CBR, Joint Stereo, 44.1kHz
CHAPTERS…: 18 timed-text chapter markers reconstructed across the complete audiobook runtime.
TITLES…..: Prologue; Chapters 1-16; Epilogue.
METADATA…: Title, author, narrator, full release date, genre and source-edition identifier retained.
COMMENT….: Source identifier and transcoding status stored as: | 1478914343 | Transcoded |
FILTERING..: None
NORMALIZE..: None
DSP……..: None
UPSCALE….: Audio not upsampled or artificially upscaled.
SOURCE MOD.: None. Original source material remained untouched.

CUSTOM COVER TWEAK
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The dated original audiobook artwork was replaced with a completely modernized historical redesign intended to give the title the visual impact of a premium 2026 audiobook release while preserving the subject, title, author and narrator information.
The revised artwork places Emperor Constantine XI and Sultan Mehmed II opposite one another above a dramatic depiction of Constantinople, combining an antique city map, Byzantine and Ottoman heraldry, siege artillery, burning fortifications, naval forces and period banners. A large weathered-gold “1453″ dominates the composition, supported by deep charcoal, crimson, parchment and metallic-gold tones.
The goal was to transform the restrained original cover into a cinematic historical presentation that immediately communicates the scale, violence and importance of the fall of Constantinople while remaining serious and appropriate for a nonfiction history audiobook.

ARTWORK….: Custom modernized front cover
DIMENSIONS.: 1254×1254
STYLE……: Cinematic Byzantine/Ottoman historical siege design
COVER……: Embedded manually into the completed M4B using Mp3tag
OUTPUT…..: Roger Crowley - 1453 The Holy War for Constantinople and the Clash of Islam and the West 2016 66.6kbps 1478914343
SIZE…….: 307 MiB
FINAL RATE.: 65.3kbps overall / 64.0kbps audio
CONTAINER..: MPEG-4 Apple-compatible audiobook container
VERIFIED…: Full 10 h 56 min MPEG Layer III audio stream, 18 ordered chapter markers, joint-stereo 44.1kHz audio and complete audiobook metadata confirmed.

RELEASE NOTE
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Built as one chapterized M4B for clean archival, Audiobookshelf compatibility and uninterrupted sequential playback. The physical Audio CD edition was used as the source, with the completed audiobook stored as 64kbps CBR MPEG Layer III joint-stereo audio at the original 44.1kHz sampling rate inside an MPEG-4 audiobook container.

The final chapter structure contains 18 ordered timed-text markers covering the complete audiobook: Prologue, Chapters 1 through 16 and Epilogue.
The completed file uses standard Mp3tag-compatible MP4 metadata and one timed-text chapter structure. Album and Album Artist are intentionally omitted because they would duplicate Title and Artist. The full audiobook release date is stored as Aug 9 2016, Genre contains content categories only, and transcoding status is recorded in Comment beside the source-edition identifier.

The filename uses the library-standard 66.6kbps (sorry not sorry) naming class for audio falling within the 60-69kbps range. The actual audio stream remains 64.0kbps CBR and the complete M4B averages 65.3kbps including container overhead, chapters, metadata and artwork.
No loudness manipulation, audio filtering, fake bitrate inflation, unnecessary sample-rate conversion, artificial enhancement or destructive source modification was applied. No mice or turtles was hurt during this process.
Enjoy =]