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.

View all my reviews

Almost Everything that Ever Happened

A History of Knowledge: Past, Present, and Future by Charles Van Doren
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There's a lot to enjoy in this book. It is very readable with a suitably broad scope, and it is filled with things I didn't know or only half-knew or looked at a different way before, especially with reference to ancient times. I'll admit, that's what I was looking for most, and so that was the part I enjoyed most.

The discussion of modern times has some interesting twists--the author refers to WWI and WWII as a single war with a pause in the middle, and I found that perspective and the discussion that went with it useful. The closer we get to modern times, the more it looks like topics in cultural history rather than an overview of the progress of knowledge, and looking back over it I think that's really what the author was going for. The description after the title and subtitle would probably be more accurate and could be reworked into a title: "The pivotal events, people, and achievements of world history." I get it that he had to settle for just the pivotal moments. It is, after all, a single volume, not an encyclopedia; he had to choose what he included.

The last section, about the future, written about 1990, is interesting because of what has come true and what hasn't. He was overly optimistic about the future of communism in China (at least so far as we can see 28 years after) but his discussion of AI sounds like it could have been written this year. He has other hits and misses, looked at with the benefit of hindsight, but it may be that the next few decades will prove him right on a few more things.

Although I was entertained and engaged in some sections, especially the first half, I did not find the entire book compelling. (Is that on me? Maybe.) Nevertheless, I give high marks for erudition and clarity, finding it comprehensible throughout, and recommend it for other non-expert history enthusiasts.

View all my reviews