Where It's One Fight After Another

With Arrow, Sword, and Spear: A History of Warfare in the Ancient World by Alfred S. Bradford
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I found this a very useful look at the history of ancient warfare, and it was reasonably fun to read.

It was a little weird how I got through it, though. I read about half straight through many years ago. (8? 9?) I guess I got busy; I forget. But I put it on the shelf with a bookmark and didn't come back to it until just a bit ago. Then I read the second half, pretty much straight through again. And it's good.

The first half is Egyptians, Assyrians et al, Persians, and Greeks. I guess that's the stuff I find most interesting, the part that's most distant, and the author does a good job not just with the outlines and broad brushstrokes but with the personalities and details. It's kinda surprising how much we know about some things 3000 years ago. In part, the book deals with evolving technology, like chariots and elephants and compound bows, but it's also about evolving systems--fighting systems, economic systems, government and army management systems. I found it all interesting and entertaining as presented.

The second half is India and China and then Rome, which gets the most time. That last bit remains less interesting to me. I'm not sure why. But he handles it well, and I learned a bunch.

One thing the author gets right for me is the level of information he uses, the scope and scale of his approach. I didn't want to read a textbook or The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire (it's not that deep), but I also don't want a wikipedia entry. The space between is still pretty big. Some books like this I've found to be aimed at a reader who is nearer an expert than a novice, and for most of us those are too dense to be interesting or comprehensible. When I'm first looking at a topic I don't know much about (say, desert fauna, or the physics of space flight), I've often found that books on the topic for young people is at the right level of comprehension--tuned toward entertainment, with clear descriptions, mostly everyday language, and lots of clarifying explanations. Now, this book isn't quite aimed at that demographic, and it presupposes a little knowledge of the world, but it has a similar scope, aimed at helping a non-scholar make sense of a pretty broad topic.

I wouldn't say this book is for casual readers. However, people interested in this topic and other motivated readers (authors, for example, who wanna get a battle scene right) would probably find this enjoyable and pretty readable.

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