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The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome | 
 enlarge | Author: Susan Wise Bauer
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
Buy New: $19.77
You Save: $10.18 (34%)
New (24) Used (11) from $17.79
Rating:  29 reviews
Sales Rank: 12876
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 800
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.7
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.2 x 2
ISBN: 039305974X
Dewey Decimal Number: 930
EAN: 9780393059748
ASIN: 039305974X
Publication Date: March 26, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Product Description
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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| Customer Reviews: Read 24 more reviews...
 A Pretty Good, But Very Limited, History April 17, 2007
Michael Gunther (Maryland, USA)
84 out of 96 found this review helpful
Following up on the success of her children's homeschool history series, Susan Wise Bauer offers this large-scale (750 pages) introduction to ancient history for adults. Bauer, a "print historian" for whom the written record is paramount, tells the story of five ancient civilizations - Egypt, Mesopotamia/the Middle East, Greece/Rome, India, and China - that have left us the most extensive written records. Her narrative focuses entirely on political history: kingdoms, empires, and their rulers; this writer will have no truck with artists, poets, philosophers, architects, or mathematicians; much less with archaeology, anthropology, sociology, or any other of the numerous disciplines that have revolutionized the study of history in the last 50 years.
Rulers and Empires is her only story, but she tells it well; the book is a pleasant read, and the author deserves full credit both for the huge effort involved in producing such a volume, and for the accuracy (the undoubted product of years of sleepless nights spent digesting hundreds of primary reference works) of her narrative. I liked the book, and enjoyed reading it. But it is very limited. There is a kind of imbalance, and tunnel-vision, that becomes more apparent the more one reflects on it. This is a book that has no fewer than eight index entries on Merodach-baladan, an obscure 8th century BC king of Babylon, but not one word on Euclid, and only two sentences on the Parthenon!
To sum up, Bauer's volume, while competently written, perversely omits nearly all of the artistic and intellectual achievements of the ancient world, that alone make that world truly great and worthy of study.
 Very interesting and quite informative April 24, 2007
Kurt A. Johnson (Marseilles, Illinois, USA)
42 out of 42 found this review helpful
I am a student of Ancient Mesopotamia, so I am always checking out new book on ancient history. This fat little book is crammed full of information on the Ancient and Classical worlds. Organized in the form of discrete essays, the essays are then presented by subject - The Edge of History, Firsts, Struggle, Empires and Identity - with the essays then sorted into chronological order. Each of the essays is very interesting and quite informative, and along the way the reader is treated to a good number of pictures, timelines and maps.
Overall, I found this book to be an excellent book, giving the reader a good feel for ancient history in the Mediterranean, Mesopotamia, India, and China. (The last two are often under-represented in older books.) I think very highly of this book, and recommend it to all students of history.
Political history of the Ancient World at its best June 24, 2007
Cesar Gonzalez Rouco (Madrid, Madrid Spain)
23 out of 24 found this review helpful
If political history is the narrative of political (and so often military) events and leaders, this is certainly a political history. It has got the advantage of presenting not only Mesopotamia and Egypt plus Greece and Rome, but also China and India,showing the progress of each part of the Ancient World in paralell. It is concise, interesting and highly readable.
Of course, the author's approach implies choosing a somehow narrow scope: no social or economic history is included, although some religious flavour is, for she masterly uses the myths of each civilization as clues to understand its politics. Taking that into account, I would reccomend also to read (as a complement to this book) "The History of Government. Volume I. Ancient Monarchies and Empires" by S.E. Finer, "Life after Death. A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion" by Alan F. Segal and "Gem in the Lotus.The Seeding of Indian Civilisation" by Abraham Eraly, to mention but a few.
A Readable History--highly recommended!! March 29, 2007
M. L. Townliand (Washington state)
14 out of 15 found this review helpful
My sons and I have read and enjoyed Bauer's Story of the World series, so when I saw that this book was coming out I pre-ordered it. I thought it might be over our heads but we have enjoyed it immensely. The 11 yo snagged it and read 18 chapters the first day! I am not a history buff but I homeschool my kids so I am always on the lookout for good books. I found The History of the Ancient World to be much more readable, enjoyable, and cohesive than the high school and college history texts we have used previously. This book could be used to homeschool high school, but you don't have to be a homeschooler to enjoy it. I think anyone with an interest in ancient history would enjoy this book. The plethora of maps and timelines really make it easy to see connections. Highly recommended!
Outstanding Introduction to the Ancient World April 13, 2007
M. Murphy (USA)
14 out of 16 found this review helpful
After college, I have been drawn to reading more and more history because of books like this. This isn't your standard textbook-style history that we all remember as dry and boring. It is a very readable text with helpful maps and time-lines aimed at those folks who are just beginning to rediscover history.
Mrs. Bauer does not inundate you with useless facts and trivia but instead teaches us history through the literature and letters of the time. We don't waste time hearing about the "average Joe" but instead get a glimpse into the minds of ancient leaders by becoming familiar with their inscriptions and those works of old historians like Herodotus. While most of the book is devoted to Mesopotamia, Northern Africa, and Europe, there are some great chapters on India and China to add a little variety.
One very nice feature of this book is its short chapters. There are over 80 chapters in this book and they break up the story into easily digested pieces. You'll find yourself reading a half-dozen chapters at a time with ease and I have even caught myself reading over a chapter while waiting for dinner to cook. You feel like you are making progress, and while I can't explain it, the shorter chapters seem to help me stay focused and remember more of what I have read.
Overall, it is a very good book that makes history enjoyable for those of us that remembered it being so dry. I'll be waiting for a second book to get me into the Renaissance - if she writes it, I'll buy it!
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