This is a remarkable book: at once the dramatic story of a truly extraordinary man and a masterclass in the practice of history from a superlative historian. Janet Nelson's brilliant insight illuminates a world that is both familiar and strange, and full of resonances between past and present. Here—seen through challenging sources, sifted and weighed with wisdom and wit—is everything we can know, twelve centuries on, about the king and emperor called Charlemagne."—Helen Castor, author of She-Wolves and Joan of Arc "An imaginative, deeply thoughtful, often provocative, always important book."—Geoffrey Koziol, Professor of History at UC Berkeley