You wake in a strange room.

Your clothes are foreign and the walls are covered in objects from a different world.

You don't know where or when you are, or if you're still dreaming.

There are footsteps in the hall.

Jumping up, you race out of the room and into the streets.

You have just entered the Twilight Histories.

The Twilight Histories Incorporated, really what you'd call our staff pick, is called Carthage 1116-23.

It's an alternate history that begins with Hannibal sacking Rome.

Hannibal, if you remember from your history books, was a Carthaginian general who crossed the Alps with an army that included elephants

and ravaged Italy for years. He was eventually forced out of Italy and died in exile.

Carthage was utterly destroyed by Rome. But in this alternate universe, the opposite happened.

Hannibal defeated the Romans, destroyed their city,

and started Carthage on a path to greatness.

I visited this world myself and at a number of different eras over its long history.

You wouldn't believe how incredible it is.

It's like a great renaissance on steroids exploding across the globe.

Art, architecture, wealth, knowledge.

There are massive libraries in every city.

There are huge cargo ships that ply the seas.

There are theatrical productions, philosophers and scientists

that rival the very best of Athens from any of its alternate histories.

It's the kind of world that makes you think our own timeline as barbaric, a dystopian universe,

...