The History of the Ancient World - Susan Wise Bauer

⭐ 7.5/10

(Originally written by Joseph)

Ancient history is my love language. If you want to speak to me on an intimate level, just say things like "and then the Spartans crossed the Hellespont" or "then commenced the sacking of Carthage." I love names like Xerxes, Sargon and Octavian - just beautiful stuff that this book has in spades.

BUT despite all that, I actually had a really hard time with this book. It is really dense and hard to follow at times, especially when it came to Chinese/ Indian history where I had a really tough time distinguishing historical figures. Reading history is kinda like following sports - the more names you know, the more interesting it becomes, and once you have a rooting interest (people you recognize and cheer for for that reason alone), things fall into place. As the history went from obscure, mythical stuff towards stuff I was more familiar with, I was way more into it. Tell me more about my queen Cleopatra! Again, in the Asian chapters the only names I ever knew were Buddah and Confucius (his westernized name), so most of these chapters did nothing for me. It was really cool to learn about that history, because it is cool and unique and often ahead of western "progress," but it was definitely hard to keep track of.

But yeah, good, beautiful writing that is taken right from ancient texts (it is a history of written history), and it reminded me a lot of the greatest history book ever written, the Silmarillion. It's just a lot, so you either need to know some stuff beforehand, or be very ambitious to learn more. I'm sure it would be easier to read the physical copy, but the audio has a very nice reading by John Lee.