History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome by Susan Wise Bauer

From Barnes & Noble

Author of a captivating history series for children, William & Mary professor Susan Wise Bauer understands better than most the importance of human interest in engaging your audience. Now she applies her elegant writing style and superlative storytelling skills to an eagerly anticipated four-book series for adults. This project aims to provide readers with an entertaining narrative survey of the rise of Western civilization; but the author will also strive to connect that story to historical events unfolding in the Middle and Far East. If we are to judge from this inaugural volume, she is well on her way to achieving her goal.

From the Publisher

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.

Publishers Weekly

Bauer (author of the four-volume The Story of the World: History for the Classical Child) guides readers on a fast-paced yet thorough tour of the ancient worlds of Sumer, Egypt, India, China, Greece, Mesopotamia and Rome. Drawing on epics, legal texts, private letters and court histories, she introduces individuals who lived through the famines, plagues, floods, wars and empire building of the ancient world: the marvelous array of characters includes Gilgamesh, Sumer's first epic hero; Y , the founder of the Xia dynasty in China; and Tiglath-Pileser III, who restored the Assyrian empire's fortunes. Because Bauer covers so much time and territory, she focuses on the Western cultures with which she seems most comfortable; the chapters on Asia and India are the least developed. In addition, some of her assertions-for instance, that the biblical book of Joshua is the clearest guide we possess to the establishment of an Israelite kingdom in Canaan-contradict general scholarly opinion or are simply wrong. However, Bauer's elegant prose and her command of much of the material makes this a wonderful starting point for the study of the ancient world. 80 maps. (Feb.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Sean Michael Fleming - Library Journal

Bauer (American literature, Coll. of William & Mary; The Well-Educated Mind) has produced a good introductory history to the ancient world in this first volume of a new series. Divided into more than 80 chapters, the work focuses on Western history but devotes space to the development of ancient civilizations in China and India. Time lines, 13 illustrations, and 80 maps are interspersed throughout to help guide readers through the twists and turns of assassinations, wars, and natural disasters that largely make up the history of the ancient world. An endnotes and a works-cited section are included. Those looking for a more scholarly examination may want to turn to D. Brendan Nagle's The Ancient World: A Social and Cultural History, but Bauer's book is recommended for all libraries needing a good primer on ancient history. [See Prepub Alert, LJ10/1/06.]

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