The author introduces his subject, defends the end of ancient history at the fall of Rome in 476AD, and expresses his desire to recognize the scope of world history and not only Western history, at least insofar as historical records exist. On the other hand, though, this is a sloppy work, with inconsistent dates, short entries that are filled in by reproductions of artwork with dubious historical accuracy about the scenes portrayed, and very sloppy printing, including at least one entry, that for Mark Anthony (Marcus Antonius), a duplication of the first paragraph of the entry (103-104) that somehow was not caught in the light-to-nonexistent editing process this book went through.Ĭoncerning the contents and structure of the book, it is straight forward and in many ways laudable. On the one hand, I am glad that someone took the effort to examine ancient leaders, defend the timescale they were looking at ,and made sure that they did not ignore the rich military history of East and South Asia. As a fond reader of ancient history and military history, I feel ambivalent about this work. Presumably, if the work sells enough, it can be edited in a second edition. This book has all the telltale signs of a book that was rushed to the market with minimal copy-editing, and the knowledge that there was demand for a book on ancient military history and that it was more important in the publisher’s mind to get a book for sale than it was to make sure that the book was polished.
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