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Ancient Worlds
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Product Description
Review
[for Carthage Must Be Destroyed]: Richard Miles tells this story with tremendous élan, combining the best of modern scholarship with narrative pace and energy. It is a superb achievement, a model for all such endeavours. He is even better on the little-known background to this tale (Peter Jones The Telegraph )
[for Carthage Must Be Destroyed]: Miles ... has written an epic and fascinating new history of the city ... [and] performed a splendid feat of resurrectionism (Tom Holland The Spectator )
[for Carthage Must Be Destroyed]: Miles ... has written an epic and fascinating new history of the city ... [and] performed a splendid feat of resurrectionism (Tom Holland The Spectator )
Product Description
THE BOOK OF THE MAJOR BBC2 SERIES
Across the Middle East, the Mediterranean and the Nile Delta, awe-inspiring, monstrous ruins are scattered across the landscape - vast palaces, temples, fortresses, shattered statues of ancient gods, carvings praising the eternal power of long-forgotten dynasties.These ruins - the remainder of thousands of years of human civilization - are both inspirational in their grandeur, and terrible in that their once teeming centres of population were all ultimately destroyed and abandoned.
In this major new book, Richard Miles recreates these extraordinary cities, ranging from the Euphrates to the Roman Empire, to understand the roots of human civilization. His challenge is to make us understand that the cities which define culture, religion and economic success and which are humanity's greatest invention, have always had a cruel edge to them, building systems that have provided both amazing opportunities and back-breaking hardship.
Miles is above all fascinated by the compromises that make the city work - the mixture of coercion and desire, ceremony and justice, the great public and private spaces created and recreated across the ancient world that defined the focus and meaning of human civilization.
This exhilarating, beautifully illustrated book is both a pleasure to read and a challenge to us all to think about our past - and about the present.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This is a well written, accessible text covering a broad overview of ancient history in the western world, particularly focused on the growth and spread of urban centres and culture, or `civilisation'. The author approaches the subject with evident enthusiasm, presenting the reader with broad strokes covering the cultures of the earliest ancient cities and civilisations, including Tyre, Carthage, Greece, the conquests of Alexander, and the rise of Rome and its change of politics.
A large part of the text centres around different governmental styles, including coverage of the earliest `strong-man' governments, Egypt's Pharaohs, through the Greek experiments with democracy, Alexander's unique style of leadership, and the Republic and Empires of Rome; each is approached in enough detail to make it interesting, whilst not leaving the reader bogged down in minutiae.
The text is bracketed by both informative maps and wonderfully done photographs - every other page seems to contain a wonderful image of some sort, all of which are a pleasure to look at, and help provide a little more context to the surrounding text. The images also make the book a pleasure to flick through; it's fairly large, but no doubt would look good on the coffee table.
As above, the content made for a fascinating read, and as a primer for all the periods covered, it works very well; it would have been nice to have gone into the topics covered in more detail, but I suspect this would need an entire library!
As a starter on what we now call `civilisation', and its political and socio-cultural growth in the western world, this is an excellent text, and a very pleasant read, and well recommended.
A large part of the text centres around different governmental styles, including coverage of the earliest `strong-man' governments, Egypt's Pharaohs, through the Greek experiments with democracy, Alexander's unique style of leadership, and the Republic and Empires of Rome; each is approached in enough detail to make it interesting, whilst not leaving the reader bogged down in minutiae.
The text is bracketed by both informative maps and wonderfully done photographs - every other page seems to contain a wonderful image of some sort, all of which are a pleasure to look at, and help provide a little more context to the surrounding text. The images also make the book a pleasure to flick through; it's fairly large, but no doubt would look good on the coffee table.
As above, the content made for a fascinating read, and as a primer for all the periods covered, it works very well; it would have been nice to have gone into the topics covered in more detail, but I suspect this would need an entire library!
As a starter on what we now call `civilisation', and its political and socio-cultural growth in the western world, this is an excellent text, and a very pleasant read, and well recommended.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review
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It really didn't surprise me when, just before the television series was broadcast, I caught Richard Miles on Radio 4 being forced to defend the use of the word "civilisation". It has become a dirty word amongst modern liberals, redolent in their minds of imperialism, colonialism and every other "ism" under the sun. Miles is of course simply using the word with its actual meaning, namely a society which lives in cities. In his introduction he notes: "In the modern West we have lost confidence in the idea of civilisation. Embarrassed by its chauvinistic and elitist connotations, we have increasingly taken refuge in less loaded terms such as 'culture' to explain our origins. [...] Our discomfort with this idea has made us consign civilisation to the museum display case, but in this book the idea of civilisation will be rescued from its enforced retirement."
The text of this book appears to be just a simple transcript of the narrative of the television series, so at times it perhaps reads slightly oddly; personally I have perhaps benefited from having seen the series beforehand, as I can hear Miles' voice and delivery in my head as I read. In covering five thousand years of civilisation beginning from the earliest Mesopotamian cities to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire it is of necessity something of a whistle-stop tour, but Miles always writes entertainingly with enthusiasm and with wit.
Overall I would probably recommend the television series over the book as I enjoyed Miles' presentation. Congratulations to the BBC for having, just for once in recent times, produced a documentary series not dumbed down and wrecked by overpowering visuals and music and condescending voice-overs but instead allowing an intelligent narrative to the fore.
The text of this book appears to be just a simple transcript of the narrative of the television series, so at times it perhaps reads slightly oddly; personally I have perhaps benefited from having seen the series beforehand, as I can hear Miles' voice and delivery in my head as I read. In covering five thousand years of civilisation beginning from the earliest Mesopotamian cities to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire it is of necessity something of a whistle-stop tour, but Miles always writes entertainingly with enthusiasm and with wit.
Overall I would probably recommend the television series over the book as I enjoyed Miles' presentation. Congratulations to the BBC for having, just for once in recent times, produced a documentary series not dumbed down and wrecked by overpowering visuals and music and condescending voice-overs but instead allowing an intelligent narrative to the fore.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
This is a lovely book; heavy, well put together, with clear and easily legible print on bright white glossy pages, and absolutely chock full of fantastic photographs, maps and other illustrations.
It's also very well written and informative, and as a companion piece to the recent BBC TV series of the same name, it is certainly a valuable reference work. As a number of ancient civilisations are covered, the individual chapters, while informative, are not overburdened with detail. This is in some ways an advantage, as a casual reader (like myself) may quickly discover that he/she does not know as much as he/she may have thought. While much of the content will be familiar, I was surprised at how much of this was new to me.
Overall, I would certainly recommend this book as an excellent introduction to a fascinating subject, whether or not you have seen the accompanying TV series.
It's also very well written and informative, and as a companion piece to the recent BBC TV series of the same name, it is certainly a valuable reference work. As a number of ancient civilisations are covered, the individual chapters, while informative, are not overburdened with detail. This is in some ways an advantage, as a casual reader (like myself) may quickly discover that he/she does not know as much as he/she may have thought. While much of the content will be familiar, I was surprised at how much of this was new to me.
Overall, I would certainly recommend this book as an excellent introduction to a fascinating subject, whether or not you have seen the accompanying TV series.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
A must for the book shelf....
Very interesting, well written account of our earliest civilisations. Not too many photographs, but those in the book are beautiful. Read more
Published 4 months ago by L. mckay
Highly readable, beautiful book
I am so glad I have the hardback edition of this book because, despite it being well enough written to have held my interest from cover to cover, it is also totally suitable as a... Read more
Published 4 months ago by bomble
Epic history of the urban origins of the modern world
This is a rigorous account of the rise from 6ooo years ago of the first cities and the roots of ancient civilization,where humans begin to cooperate,live and work together in... Read more
Published 6 months ago by technoguy
A great glossy Coffee table book.
Lots of lovely pictures, fits in well with the TV series and its fairly easy to read - well apart from the fact its a great big heavy coffee table book that is just plain awkward... Read more
Published 10 months ago by Mr. A. J. D. White
Outstanding book drawing on the TV series
This is a delightful book based on, or perhaps rather following from, the BBC TV series presented by Richard Miles. Read more
Published 13 months ago by Paul S. Ell
More of a buffet than a feast
More of a buffet of knowledge than a feast of knowledge. Relegated to my mothers coffee table as a talking point rather than being avidly read. Read more
Published 13 months ago by Y. Yearwood
Accessible overview of the origins of Western civilization...
Ancient Worlds gives you a good overview of the origins of Western civilization, starting in Mesopotamia and ending with the Romans and Christianity. Read more
Published 13 months ago by S. P. Moses
a thorough, yet engaging take on the roots of the city...
By now Richard Miles' BBC series on the Ancient World will have passed; however, this fantastic book remains. Read more
Published 14 months ago by Mr. Steve Jansen
Much better than the television series.....
I watched the recent Ancient Worlds television series but found it somewhat disappointing. Richard Miles is an able performer and what he said was informative and fascinating. Read more
Published 15 months ago by Wynne Kelly
Excellent primer. Coffee-table genius- but not for the serious...
This is the archetypal coffee-table book. Beautifully designed, heavyweight in appearance, clear and well-written, exploring complex ideas in a very general fashion. Read more
Published 15 months ago by M. W. Hatfield
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