The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome by Susan Wise Bauer Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome
Book Review: A Rewarding Journey
Summary: 4 Stars
Susan Baurer begins the history and evolution of our ancient civilizations by asking, where is the line between archaeology/anthropology and history? By interpreting the earliest known records, supplemented with the grains of truth found in traditional stories, the narrative begins in Mesopotamia approximately 5000 BC. The journey includes a review of Egyptian history, balanced with highlights from India and China, before concluding with the Roman Empire and Constantine's conversion to Christianity.
So what can be said about a nearly 800 page book that includes enough facts to fill a thousand final Jeopardy's? It was a great read. The author showed a great ability to judge the amount of detail to provide while keeping the narrative moving forward. Most importantly she weaved together the history of peoples that are usually taught as separate subjects.
And don't think of this as a simple listing of the political who's-who either. The influence of climate, religion, and geology are explained - particularly through the use of concise footnotes.
Go ahead and get this book and soon you will be impressing your friends with timely references to Sargon, Hammurabi, and Han China.
Book Review: Enjoyable work with some serious flaws
Summary: 4 Stars
First the good news. Mrs. Bauer has written an engaging work of narrative political history, that almost forgotten genre. Almost every aspect of this book, from the short chapters to the excellent maps to the timelines is designed to be reader friendly. The book is clearly intended to be a help to self-educators, and, as such, it succeeds very well.
I am particularly impressed by the way in which Mrs. Bauer shows the interconnectedness of the Mediterranean world. The amount of research into primary sources is also quite impressive for book intended for non-scholarly readers.
I withheld one star because of some stylistic quirks which I found extremely annoying. One was the persistent description of the direction 'south' as 'down', and 'north' as 'up'. Has she forgotten that there is a large English reading audience in the Southern Hemisphere? Publishers these days seem to have given up on editing altogether. I also found her asides in the footnotes to be gratuitous and irritating. Again, a good editor might have counseled her to eliminate them. I also thought she might have given a chapter to the Phonecians, that most fascinating of ancient civilizations.
Book Review: Putting some tasty meat on the dry bones of the ancient world.
Summary: 5 Stars
Bauer bites off a very large mouthful but manages to digest it in a way that is both readable and entertaining. With "The History of the Ancient World" she delivers on her promise to deal with history based on written sources, leaving the dusty archaeological details to others. This approach can be a little disconcerting if you are used to reading dry academic histories. Particularly in the study of the ancient middle east, the usual academic history of Egypt, Sumeria and the Assyrians tends to be heavy on pottery shards and light on plot. Having just read Trevor Bryce's Kingdom of the Hittites, in which an entire civilization is reconstructed from partial inscriptions, archaeological sites and guess work - a difficult task indeed - I was at first disturbed by Bauer's smooth flowing, light touch. She dwells almost exclusively on the story and avoided inconvenient archaeological facts and scholarly debates. At times the history seemed to be more an interpretation of mythology or a retelling of the grand story of human civilization, rather than an objective investigation of historical truth. But, of course, this seems to be what was intended here. In spite of the excellent use of maps (possibly the simplest and yet most comprehensive example I have ever seen - no place name mentioned in the text is left off of a map found nearby), and the extensive cited works section, this book is all about drama.
The play's the thing, and not the facts. And this is what makes this book so good. Once you realize you are being told a story, you stop worrying and let Bauer sweep you away. From the ancient glory of Sumeria, through the incestuous Dynasties of Egypt (did you know Ramses II had his mummy's nose packed with peppercorns), the brutal Assyrians, the mysteries of the Phoenicians, Alexander the Great, and the rise of a small town named Rome, it is all told with verve, biting wit and an eye for the picaresque detail.
While this is definitely not an academic work, its vast scope and the way it follows a narrative through time make it an exciting and interesting read - something you will enjoy as someone new to this time period, or as an scholar who wants something that ties together all that academic material you have tried to digest over the years. Of course, experts will quibble about this detail or that. There are probably large swathes of material here that would be contested by serious historians. But I would suggest relaxing, sitting back, putting up your feet and enjoying this book as the rich, old, flowing tale that it is. You can always ferret out the details later.
Book Review: Validating one's sources? Good idea.
Summary: 1 Stars
As a friend of History and an individual with quite the affinity for the young Roman emperor Elagabalus, I feel it should be my partial duty to speak out when published works are grossly incorrect in regards to his meager 4-year-rule of the Empire. One main source cited for the information regarding Elagabalus in this text is the Augustan History, which has been debated by scholars for centuries and finally declared not a reliable source for any of the periods it is said to cover.
Almost every portion of the child emperor's life described in this work has been reported false, mislead, or biased by the lies of Rome itself; I feel if the author had done more dedicated research before writing that little portion it would have done her worlds more good than making herself look foolish.
It leads me to believe that perhaps many other subjects covered are covered incorrectly, or cited from previously discredited sources; be they primary or otherwise. I would suggest that one avoid this work altogether, but perhaps it holds some merit. I've been too turned away by just those few incorrect pages to read further.
Book Review: strange flaw
Summary: 4 Stars
So far, I'm finding the same strengths and limitations in this book pointed out by other readers. Overall, I think the book has a lot to offer, but I'm puzzled by the author's approach to the "Great Flood," and I'm wondering if anyone else found it problematic.
In Chapter Two, Bauer calls the Great Flood "the closest thing to a universal story that the human race possesses." She points to various stories of a massive, devastating deluge: three from Mesopotamia, one from China, one from India, and two from the Americas. Although she doesn't come right out and say it or explain it, her underlying assumption is that each of these stories refers to the same event. She uses this belief to discount the otherwise most plausible, current idea for how the Mesopotamian flood happened. (This is Ryan and Pitman's theory that in 7000 BC, the rising glacial-melt waters of the Mediterranean Sea broke through a land barrier into the Black Sea, creating the Bosphorus Strait and causing the Black Sea to flood south into Mesopotamia.) She dismisses this theory because, she suggests, the date is wrong. "How," she asks, "did stories of a universal flood make their way into the oral traditions of so many peoples who, by any reckoning, were far away from Mesopotamia by 7000 BC?" Pointing to the two flood stories found in Central and South America, she states that "the shared disaster must have taken place before 10,000 BC, when hunters migrated across the Bering Strait."
I wasn't expecting such a failure of logic from this author. There are, I believe, other possible explanations for the Asian and American flood stories. One need not assume that they each arose from the same, middle-eastern flood. A tsunami or category five hurricane could easily have wreaked havoc on an early, shore-hugging population, leaving only a handful of survivors to tell the tale. The giving-way of a glacial plug would have had a similar effect on inland people. It seems natural that later generations would explain these "Noahs" in terms of their own cosmologies and parochial horizons.
I appreciated the care Bauer took in her Preface to tell us why she approached this history the way she did. I found refreshing her self-awareness as an historian with choices to make. I wish she had exercised a little more of that care and self-awareness in her discussion of Flood stories.