History book reviews

2020-05-06 An excellent and accessible coverage of Stonehenge, not simply as a monument, but also as part of the sacred landscape of the area, as well as the people who built and developed it over a millennia. A lot of the book is based on Mike Pearson Parker’s extensive excavations and reinterpretion of previous archaeological digs in the area. Overall, a great read that didn’t... Continue reading

2020-04-16 Always a pleasure to read Francis Pryor’s books, especially the warm and easy to read narrative, and the focus on the people of the past rather than just their ‘stones and bones’. Areas of this book need updating for more recent research, some of which was covered in his later book “Home”. Either way, another engaging read on prehistory by one of the most... Continue reading

2020-03-27 I bought this book thinking it would describe something about how prehistoric belief systems. Instead, Colin Renfrew simply marvels at how social changes in the past would have required a change in thinking. And that’s it. There is some archaeology in this book, but not much, which is astonishing considering Renfrew is one of the UK’s leading archaeologists. Instead he spends a lot of... Continue reading

2019-12-29 This is a great book if you want to learn more about the archaeology of the Proto-Indo-Europeans on the Russian Steppes. Disappointingly, the title is misleading as it covers almost nothing about the spread of Indo-Europeans outside of the steppes. The book starts well enough with an exploration of Proto-Indo-European as a language – what we know, and what we can learn from it.... Continue reading

2019-12-16 As a general history of Ancient Greece, this book is probably the definitive guide – evidenced by the numerous reprints and republication of the “brief” version. However, the one huge flaw in this otherwise excellent text is the complete lack of academic references in the text, which means there’s no way to chase up specific details for further reading. Otherwise, a book that serves... Continue reading

2019-12-11 This is the first of the Very Short Introductions I’ve been disappointed with. Perhaps it’s because I wasn’t very familiar with Etruscan history, but I found this book to be meandering and very unstructured. I was left with the distinct impression that this book was written by someone with a specialty in art history who was trying to fit everything else around that, which... Continue reading

2019-12-01 Another good Very Short Introduction, providing a general overview of Anglo-Saxon Britain. While it touched on a lot of different areas and figures, it didn’t get bogged down with any single area or character – in other words, Wessex and Alfred, as some others might do. The result was a decent general tour with some good social history. Rating: 4/5 Continue reading

2019-12-01 This provided a decent introduction to the Vikings, though with more of a slant toward the North Atlantic than the East, Baltic States, and Russia. It also didn’t cover so much of the sagas – which perhaps might have merited their own chapter, as might beliefs. I would have liked to have seen the Pictish question answered rather than raised, but there was some... Continue reading

2019-11-18 Another fun Very Short Introduction, in which Cunliffe manages to pack in a surprising amount of interesting information about the Druids, without repeating himself too much on what he’s already covered in his other writings. There were omissions, and Cunliffe can be curiously critical of some historical sources (Tacitus) while being entirely accepting of others (Pliny the Elder – the man who wrote about... Continue reading

2019-10-29 Another interesting Very Short Introduction, as I work through the university library catalogue. This time, leading archaeologist Sir Barry Cunliffe provides a general overview of his specialism of Celtic prehistory. Considering how much furore there has been about trying to redefine the Celts, Cunliffe manages to take a solid middle ground by exploring many different areas, such as classical writings, archaeology, linguistics, and folk... Continue reading