Book Reviews

Mathematics in Ancient Egypt traces the development of Egyptian mathematics, from the end of the 4th millennium BC to the end of the Pharaonic Period in Greco-Roman times. Imhausen uses mathematical texts that have been discovered, documents...

We know the big names - Cicero, Diodorus, Caesar, Livy - but we forget how periods in Rome's history were recorded by multiple people, mostly at the same time. Many times history books were a not just a narrative but a composed book of first-hand...

Patricia Southern's writing breathes wit and entertainment into her treatment of Hadrian's Wall. Hadrian's Wall: Everyday Life on a Roman Frontier could easily have been yet another dry interpretation of the archaeological and historical...

Blood of the Celts: The New Ancestry Story, by Jean Manco, a building historian and the author of Ancestral Journeys: The Peopling of Europe from the First Ventures to the Vikings, traces the complex story of the Celtic peoples through history...

China: A History Volume I - From Neolthic Cultures through the Great Qing Empire by Harold M. Tanner is very clear history of China from prehistoric times to 1799 CE. I have not found that there is a Volume II available but, when or if it...

Caligula. Gladiator. Spartacus. HBO's series Rome. If you've seen any on-screen adaptation of life in the Roman Empire, you've seen some depiction of gossip worthy or taboo sex. Cleopatra seduced Caesar; Caligula held infamous orgies; Nero...

Shaye Cohen's third edition of his work about Jewish life from the Maccabees to the Mishnah is most valuable as an overview. Oddly enough, he offers the most poignant critiques in his third edition preface, writing that sometimes he "speaks...

Spain: 1001 Sights is not a regular book on Archaeology, but a guide through the historical and archaeological heritage of Spain. Inside this guide you will find a large variety of cave paintings, dolmens and menhirs, Iberian and Celtic villages...

"Warfare in the Ancient World" by Brian Todd Carey Is a book that not only explains warfare but why certain major events took place during ancient times. The book goes from the depths of the ancient Sumerians to the late Roman empire, a period...