A few thousand years of history in one great book | The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest...

informative and fascinating | The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome | Susan Wise Bauer

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	• The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome Susan Wise Bauer W. W. Norton & Company, 2007 - 896 pages average customer review:based on 35 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A Good Read

The author presents a concise but full review of major epochs in world history, giving the characters personality.

A few thousand years of history in one great book

This is a great history book for those who never learned or who have forgotten the world history they learned in school. It is quite exhaustive in its scope, covering most histories for the time period for which there are written records. It's interesting to be able to compare what was happening in China or India to what was happening in Rome or Egypt at the same time for example. While Bauer does not go into a lot of detail about the different time periods or nations, many references are provided if you want to investigate a topic further. This book is also a great reference in case the name of some ancient ruler comes up and you want to quickly find out about the person.

Near the end of the book she did seem to focus mostly on Rome. I'm not sure if this was due to a lack of material on other cultures for that time or a European bias towards what's familiar. Up to that point I had enjoyed learning about Chinese and Indian history of which I know very little. For most of the book however, the writing is spread evenly between Europe, Mesopotamia, India, and China. Sub Saharan Africa and the Americas are mostly ignored, and according to the author this is due to a lack of records about their history during this time period, and not because of any sense of irrelevance.

I enjoyed how bits of writings from the various time periods were included, and the attempts correlate real history with well known stories are mostly myth. I appreciated the fact that she points out when there is some debate or question about the authenticity of items, and allows the reader to determine how believable these items are.

Overall this is an excellent book for people who would like to learn more about world history without having to read dozens of volumes. I think the level of detail for the time periods and cultures is appropriate. I enjoyed reading the book and did not find it dry at all. The writer intersperses some humor throughout the book keeping it interesting and alive.

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informative and fascinating

This is my favorite general period history of all time. Her refreshing perspective and ability to keep the story moving without either bieing bogged down in details or dismissive of seemingly minor players made this not only an enjoyable read but a potentially tremendous textbook for any teacher wanting to give their student a sense of how things truly fit together.

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One of the better books on history published.

Tho the history covered in this book is not very broad, it covers much ground and it does it well. History can be boring, but this book is not. It tells the past like a story and the way the book is laid out makes learning easy. There is much to learn from this book. There are some fictional tales thrown in the mix, but the author usually tells you when a part is considered fiction.

I never liked history, however; this book has changed that. Thanks Susan, I look forward to your next books in this series, hopefully they are not too far away!

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A lively and engaging narrative history showing the common threads in the cultures that gave birth to our own. This is the first volume in a bold new series that tells the stories of all peoples, connecting historical events from Europe to the Middle East to the far coast of China, while still giving weight to the characteristics of each country. Susan Wise Bauer provides both sweeping scope and vivid attention to the individual lives that give flesh to abstract assertions about human history.

Dozens of maps provide a clear geography of great events, while timelines give the reader an ongoing sense of the passage of years and cultural interconnection. This narrative history employs the methods of ?history from beneath??literature, epic traditions, private letters and accounts?to connect kings and leaders with the lives of those they ruled. The result is an engrossing tapestry of human behavior from which we may draw conclusions about the direction of world events and the causes behind them. 13 illustrations, 80 maps.

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