Howdy, all! I am a college student currently engrossed in Late Antique Rome and am trying to absorb as much as I can in regards to that subject. I'm looking for recommendations on scholarly works that describe the later Roman Empire as well as the transformation of the Roman state into the successor kingdoms that made up the early Medieval period.
I currently have an interest in basically all aspects of this broad period, so I would definitely be excited by books dealing with the Christianization of the Empire, economic reforms, diplomacy and dealings with migratory peoples, the advent of Islam and dealings with Sassanian Persia, the arts of the period, the transformation of the Greek East into the Byzantine state, and etc.
Thank you in advance.
As I understand it Peter Brown is basically credited with "inventing" Late Antiquity as a period of study, I've read most of "The World of Late Antiquity," which is excellent.
The problem, I think you'll find, is that anything about the Arabs tends to be written by an entirely different set of authors. For them see Hugh Kennedy or Fred Donner.
There's also the Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity, but it was checked out when I was doing my essays on this last year haha.
For the late Roman army, I would suggest Hugh Elton's [Warfare in Roman Europe, A.D. 350-425] (http://www.amazon.com/Warfare-Europe-350-425-Classical-Monographs/dp/0198152418/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395619490&sr=8-1&keywords=warfare+in+roman+europe). It really is one of the best books on the subject. I would also suggest Christopher Kelly's [Ruling the Later Roman Empire] (http://www.amazon.com/Ruling-Later-Empire-Revealing-Antiquity/dp/0674022440/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395619611&sr=8-1&keywords=ruling+the+later+roman+empire+by+christopher+kelly), which provides an in-depth examination of the bureaucracy and administrative apparatus of the later Empire during the third, fourth, and fifth centuries.