2019-04-13
This book takes the reader on a tour of various ancient cities across the Mediterranean and Near East. I found some of the focus on architecture a little dry, but Gates nicely salts his narrative with excerpts of political and social history, which helps bring the cities a little more alive.
It’s real strength is just how comprehensive this book is – I don’t know of anything similar in scope, which makes it fantastic as a reference for anyone interested in any aspect of ancient history/archaeology.
The one complaint is that some of the images weren’t optimized for viewing on Fire tablets which left some of the labels blurred, and some of the Turkish names were malformatted in early chapters.
Overall, though, a fantastic resource.
Rating: 5/5