Book Request - Ancient Empires: From Mesopotamia to the Rise of Islam
One book title per request, please.
- Title: Ancient Empires: From Mesopotamia to the Rise of Islam
- Author: Eric H. Cline, Mark W. Graham
- Publisher: Cambridge University Press
- ISBN: 978-0521717809
- External Links: https://www.cambridge.org/us/universitypress/subjects/classical-studies/ancient-history/ancient-empires-mesopotamia-rise-islam?format=HB&isbn=9780521889117
Ancient Empires is a relatively brief yet comprehensive and even-handed overview of the ancient Near East, the Mediterranean, and Europe, including the Greco-Roman world, Late Antiquity, and the early Muslim period. Taking a focused and thematic approach, it aims to provoke a discussion of an explicit set of themes supplemented by the reading of ancient sources. By focusing on empires and imperialism as well as modes of response and resistance, it is relevant to current discussions about order, justice, and freedom. The book concludes that some of the ancient world's most enduring ideas, value systems, and institutions were formulated by peoples who were resisting the great empires. It analyzes the central, if problematic, connection between political and ideological power in both empire formation and resistance. The intricate interrelations among ideological, economic, military, and political power are explored for every empire and resisting group.
- A brief yet comprehensive and even-handed overview of the ancient Near East, the Mediterranean and Europe, including the Greco-Roman world, Late Antiquity and the early Muslim period
- A focused and thematic approach which provokes discussion of an explicit set of themes and allows time for reading actual ancient sources
- A practical focus on empires and imperialism as well as modes of response, which are themes currently on the minds of many college students and others
