"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