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Book Review
Among Women: From the Homosocial to the Homoerotic in the Ancient World
Sexuality and gender in Graeco-Roman antiquity has piqued the interest of historians in recent years. Unlike modern Western society, the lives of men and women were often separated into different social spheres in both public and private...
Book Review
What Is Paleolithic Art? Cave Paintings and the Dawn of Human Creativity
Clottes' book, translated from the French, introduces the reader to current issues in the study of parietal art, the technical term for prehistoric paintings found on walls both outside and in caves. One can imagine the difficulty studying...
Book Review
Mortal Republic: How Rome Fell into Tyranny
In 12 chapters, Mortal Republic traces the Roman Republic's transformation into an autocratic empire by looking at key economic, social, and political developments. This book attempts to explain the death of the Roman Republic as its transformation...
Book Review
Decorated Roman Armour: From the Age of the Kings to the Death of Justinian the Great
In Decorated Roman Armour: From the Age of the Kings to the Death of Justinian the Great, Raffaele D'Amato and Andrey Evgenevich Negin provide a chronological and typological analysis of Roman army equipment, especially focusing on “the evolution...
Book Review
Women at War in the Classical World
Classical history tends to focus on the big-ticket war stories: Hannibal crossing the Alps, Alexander conquering Persia, Achilles and Hector's final epic battle at Troy or Caesar defeating the Gauls. War has historically been a man's world...
Book Review
Exploring the Life, Myth, and Art of the Ancient Near East
In Exploring the Life, Myth, and Art of the Ancient Near East, Michael Kerrigan attempts to present the cultural depth of the ancient Near East through its myths and art, writing primarily for grades 7-12. He does so by offering summaries...
Book Review
The First Signs: Unlocking the Mysteries of the World's Oldest Symbols
Genevieve von Petzinger is a Canadian author and paleoanthropologist who is currently the only researcher in the world focusing on the abstract signs that can be found at almost 400 sites across Europe. This research and the 32 signs that...
Book Review
Teotihuacan: City of Water City, of Fire
Teotihuacan is not even that old, but its origins are already obscure. Founded in the 1st century CE and located within the Valley of Mexico, Teotihuacan was once the “most populous city in the Americas,” and probably among the five or ten...
Book Review
Streams of Gold, Rivers of Blood: The Rise and Fall of Byzantium, 955 A.D. to the First Crusade (Onassis Series in Hellenic Culture)
When Basil II died in 1025 CE, the empire he left behind stretched from Sicily to the Crimea. His long reign was the pinnacle of one and a half centuries of Byzantine resurgence. Yet, within a lifetime, that same empire teetered on the brink...
Book Review
Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire
The history of the Byzantine Empire covers a timeframe of over a millennium, and this fact alone has caused all kinds of headaches for authors, chief amongst them the dilemma of what to leave in and out of their books. The majority of writers...
