Ancient Plunder And Modern Politics
346868
Art may be a symbol of a culture, but its perceived value has been a prize of conquest since before recorded history. The chief distinction between then and now has been the application of the industrial revolution's technology to loot with amazing abandon, a predominantly Western European endeavor. While the author's sympathies are with the exploited countries of origin, as we know them now, the case for the alternative is succinctly made and explored: If rich westerners saw works of amazing art, the locals saw cheap building supplies and raw materials. The builders of these amazing works of art were races and societies apart from those who inhabit those regions today, who more often then not are indifferent, if not actually hostile, to what we might consider to be cultural patrimony. The focus on four western art institutions that have benefited from the plunder, still ongoing, is contrasted with the political entities who are exploiting the western hand wringing with the raw exercise of power for its own sake. Well written if not a bit preachy, the book's 399 pages are organized into 15 chapters within four parts.
34816
Adrienne Mayor indeed makes a case for Mithridates being Rome's deadliest enemy. There were a number of kings with this name, the deadly one being Mithridates VI Eupator. Mayor's interest seems to stem from Mithridate's famed use of poison both as a tool and as a personal program of antidote (she has written about poison in another context). It is hard to separate legend from what facts there are, but this book makes a convincing case. Mithridates was king of Pontus (part of the Black Sea coast of Anatolia), and of mixed Greek and Persian heritage. He seems to have been a gifted orator, to be utterly ruthless, very intelligent (though I am doubtful that he actually knew 25 languages). He ruled much more than just Pontus, and if things had worked out differently, might have established a lasting empire.

Mithridates is an amazing figure, but something I found amazing is different--how only a few Roman legions, albeit apparently under inspired leadership, conquered such a huge territory and defeated such a formidable enemy, in quite remarkable campaigns. Mayor portrays Rome as the villain here, an aggressive colonial power out for plunder--her view of the later Empire seems more favorable. Her Mithridates becomes a kind of resistance figure, who wanted to combine Greek and Persian elements into something new. I'm not entirely convinced of all her points, but this is a very good book, thoroughly researched and superbly entertaining.
3414328
Excellent revisit to Henri Pirenne's book. This is a much more likely explanation of the end of classical civilization through a careful examination of archeological evidence. There is a completely unjustified mythology that Islam was a great, civilization that achieved great things as the surviving civilization from Rome shriveled to its own death. Instead, Scott shows that Islam's inherent violent nature did fatal damage to a thriving classical civilization that was so civilized that armies and serving in them was not held in high esteem. This is a must read to dispel the false notion that the West "fell".  The terror and anti-civil phenomenon of Islam was in every way a destructive force as it has been since its invention in the 600s. The book starts off slow - in my estimation - and the review of archeological remains such as coins seemed a weak argument and stretched too far to make such a sweeping argument about the fall of the West. However, as you read further there seemed to be a snow balling effect. Far more data and real history started to build a strong argument. We are all in danger if we do not learn the truth of history and the foe and enemy of all civilized peoples which is Islam.
2301464
This book is an extremely well-written collection of chapters, each written by a different author. Despite the multiplicity of authors, the message remains clear, and the information flows smoothly. This is a very insightful read, not only for lovers of history, but also for those who are interested in the present. The political and economic circumstances of ancient times are no different in their principle forms than those circumstances in which we find ourselves in the present day. Want to understand why modern politics are failing? Read this book and soak in the history of humanity, and see that our present day nations are no different than those of ancient times.
2055736
David Hendin brings to life the human importance of weights and measures. He enlightens us about the history, utility and design of these interesting and sometimes inscribed objects. David provides a context for these objects as part of the cultural anthropology of the Ancient Near East. He helps us understand the interplay of human trade, weights and developing monetary systems . The interplay of weights and measures with the warp and woof of the human condition is also spelled out . Barter proceeded coinage:  weights and measures became a necessary part of our social fabric and their usage was wide spread. A fair deal and getting along in business were necessary for civilized life. As usual,  David has great stories to tell about his pursuit of these miniature art works in bazaars and fascinating meetings with denizens of the antiquity trade in who sell these objects . The book is scholarly, yet engrossing . I recommend it to anyone intrigued with the mysteries of the Ancient Near East . Stephen N. Gerson M.D.
3896607
An ex-circus strongman racing to collect ancient artifacts ahead of a mustachioed adversary; a long-gone traveler who returns with tales of a fabulous ancient monument buried in sand; the opening of a pharaoh's astounding tomb; endless haggling and scuffles with backward natives; an expedition to find a lost temple in the desert where ancient armies vanished without a trace; and a grave that disappears. Bad Victorian fiction? No, it's the life of Giovanni Battista Belzoni, contained in Part Two of this book. Belzoni is the most flamboyant out of a host of vivid characters in this story, the story of how the plunder of Egyptian artifacts developed--much too slowly--into efforts at conservation and careful study. Egyptophiles will wince at the careless treatment of artifacts by early explorers like Belzoni, but it's hard not to be amazed by their exploits, which Fagan, a knowledgeable archaeologist, retells almost as compellingly as a novelist. Not all periods are covered in equal detail, but the book is an accessible and often fascinating overview of the subject.
2622335
The author addresses some key aspects of the modern industrialized 21 st century world, where we as a society have decided to disproportionately reward speculators and corrupt CEOs and literally give slave wages to the workers and real producers. Indeed, this modern era seems dominated by "faux" capitalism or as some would accurately say "crony capitalism". A true free market is disliked by large enterprises which want all the rewards and none of the risk. Small and medium sized businesses are virtually gone along with living wages in this so called high productivity and technology dominated era. In the world of food and agriculture this has had a devastating impact on communities around the word. It is not just democracy, but sustainability that is at stake when a politically connected elite can loot from the rest. A grim future indeed.
721300
For most Westerners, the Persian Empire was an Asiatic historical area conquered by the Macedonian Alexander the Great. But in this companion to a British Museum exhibition based on unprecedented loans from the National Museum of Iran and other major museum sources of Persian antiquities, Allen presents the Persian Empire in its own right, as the Roman Empire or the British Empire are in the history books. Besides working at the British Museum, the author has also worked at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. The many objects of the exhibition that are pictured are supplemented by photographs of the remains of monuments and buildings, landscape photographs, maps, and works of art to evince the high level of political and artistic accomplishments. Allen presents the Empire by a history defined mostly by the succession of rulers until the conquest combined with a cultural appreciation of the art work, architecture, religious ideas, political order, and pattern of growth and decay.
3457057
I really enjoyed this book with its generous sweep of detailing the various ingredients and effects of fish-farming. It makes the most of ancient sources and uses anthropological evidence from quite recent methods to surmise about techniques that probably were common almost 2000 years ago. Of course, although the lack of direct archaeological evidence makes the whole enterprise very difficult, AM makes it all sounds very convincing and it is highly entertaining for the layman and specialist alike.
2152683
Mike Duncan does a fabulous job of bringing to life the Roman era from 146-78 BC.

First, I highly recommend this book whether you are a professional historian or academician or whether you are just interested in Western history.  The book was both informative and engaging.  Mike Duncan writes in a very approachable, conversational style.  The book is extremely well provenanced, but the tone comes across as though you are listening to a favorite uncle tell stories.

The parallels between Rome and current Western civilization have been in the public debate for over a century (and, probably earlier) .  In that regard, this book was especially enlightening.

While we imagine that we have social issues today, current political events cannot compare with a politically directed mob pummeling a leader to death in a public setting and then killing 300 of his followers and dumping them in a river.

This era that Duncan selected is not as well known and explored as some of the other eras.  Personally, I was not aware of most of the political leaders or the movements, but the author makes good on his premise and shows how the events of 146-78 BC cast long shadows over the remainder of Roman history.

One of the principal points in the book is that what caused the fall of the Roman way of life more than anything else was the disintegration of the commonly held, sacred rules of civilized behavior, the mos maiorum.  Professor Duncan goes on to describe how prominent, and often good hearted, leaders chipped away at the social fabric to accomplish tactical objectives.  Whether it was the Gracchi  brothers causing reform (and both ending up being publically hunted down) , or Marius who violated the common practice of sitting for only one consulship (and served SEVEN instead), each contributed to an overall eventual collapse in civil regard for tradition and decency towards one another.

My favorite stories from the book were the exploits of Cinna.  He was both a political genius as well as an excellent military tactician.  By the time Cinna arrived on the scene, political murderer was all too frequent.  When Cinna showed mercy and allowed a former adversary to reenter Rome as a citizen, Marius, the forces of Marius took advantage of the situation and went on a killing spree requiring Cinna to order the equivalent of martial law.  This did not sit well with the Romans, and eventually this lead to Cinna being skewered by a centurion.

Cinnas death was the proximate cause of a Roman civil war.

I could write for pages and pages, but go get the book and read the accounts yourself.

You will be glad that you did.
4970249
Carter's book is a wonderful read.  It's light hearted, slightly "off the wall" and very informative.  Some of the information regarding ancient public and private sanitation systems was already known to me, but I was particularly impressed with the author's unwillingness to just take the historian's word on the subject as a given.  His attempt to create a Roman style pipe was not only very funny, it was very informative.  His search for a pipe in situ was impressive--not to mention enviable; I would love to hop a plane to a foreign land just to satisfy my own curiosity about some topic.

The book is very well written and pulls the reader along with its wit and humor.  Although the subject is one few individuals actually take time to consider, it is one of the more important issues facing mankind even today.  As the author notes, several million people in third world countries do not enjoy the benefits of clean water and sewage removal.  When I took a class on the history of medicine some time ago one of the things pointed out was that despite the acknowledged technological changes in medicine, the two most significant events with respect to human health and longevity were the introduction of antibiotics and public sanitation.  In fact, of the two, the latter is probably the more significant.

It was interesting to notice how fitful have been the advances in sanitation, especially since its significance was already recognized in prehistory.  If the ancient people of the Indian subcontinent realized the benefit of the technology even before the advent of the written word, its slow progress seems odd.  As the author points out, even the "modern" toilet is a 19th century product, which has changed only in minor details.  Carter's interview with and discussion of the toilet technology introduced recently in India is especially interesting, because it suggests that the solution to the problem of waste removal might also conceivably provide a solution to energy issues.

THOSE WRITING PAPERS on history, history of medicine, history of science, anthropology, sociology, poly sci.  For what reasons might public sanitation have failed to progress more evenly through time?  What types of resources might a society need to possess to carry out sewage removal and water purification?  What did this author prove by carrying out his experiment in making and assembling a Roman type pipe?  What types of knowledge might earlier people have lacked that made public sanitation seem unnecessary?  Archaeological studies of earlier pre-agricultural societies suggest that, despite what was previously believed about them, early hunter-gatherers were actually healthier than agriculturalists.  Why do you think this was the case?  What would this author have to say about it?  Why might a government not want to extend sanitation?  What effect might lack of sanitation in 3rd world countries have on the developed world?  What issues in 3rd world countries perhaps impede the progress of this type of technology?

As funny as the book is, the author makes some remarkable and important points about the future of our planet and our species.
965871
Prophets in the Old Testament spoke the words of God, but they also knew how to read the signs of the times. Ben Wiker has put together in Worshipping The State a mountain of data and historical facts to prove his point: liberalism as we see it today is designed to obliterate Christianity and replace it with a hedonistic pagan-state that functions both as government and religion. Liberals who read this book might scoff initially at it's forthright premise, but after reading only a few pages, would see that this is no joke. Liberalism takes on all of the characteristics of a religion (dogma, doctrines about cosmology and morality) but utilizes the coercive power of the state to implement its agenda. Wiker notes the eerie parallels to pagan Rome that we are seeing in modern society today. And he carefully constructs the rise of this in the last 500 years through Machiavelli, Hobbes, Spinoza, Rousseau, Locke, and into the universities of today. This work is engaging, incredibly readable, highly researched, and well-documented. I highly recommend this work from a modern day prophet who is reading the signs of the times. His insight helps us understand where we are now, where we are headed, and why we have to stop the persecution of Christianity in order to save us from becoming the next formerly great empire. And while you are at it, pick up some of his prior books that carefully and insightfully examine where we are, and how we got here.
1586882
This book presents a summary of current knowledge as of its publication date, of the state of research on civilizations that lived in the Eastern Mediterranean region from approx. 1500 BC to the date provided in the title. The author presents the information in an easily readable manner, almost like a story and focuses on the interrelationships between different cultures to form interconnected economies. He also looks at how this relates to today's world and our interconnected economies - not a bad analogy in some ways. However, there is a lot of redundancy and its elimination would make this an even better book with a tighter focus. I found myself saying, "yes, you already said that get to the point" several times. However, the material itself is interesting and overall fairly well presented. I would recommend this for people interested in either ancient history or the history of economics. This book left me looking forward to reading new research and seeing how it might tie into this information and with new questions of my own I plan to look up.
3455083
The period from the reign of Constantine to the great voyages of discovery--or from the fourth to the fifteenth century--was once seen merely as the long, slow decline and fall of the Roman Empire. Yet, for Europeans, it is also a "supreme story of defeat turned into victory."
Colin McEvedy's pioneering atlas, revised and expanded for this new edition, treats as one unit the Mediterranean, Europe and the nomads' steppeland to the East (the habitat of Huns, Turks and Mongols). Illuminating maps and lively commentaries present the towns and trade routes, the changing population patterns, the boundaries of Christendom (and later Islam) and the ever-shifting political units. The result is a wonderfully eloquent picture, as Dr. McEvedy puts it, "of how old empires fell and new ones rose, and how, in Europe, a new society emerged which had the energy to break free from the geographical, intellectual and technical limitations that defined the medieval world."
4930101
This book represents one of the first major efforts to study the phenomenon of piracy in Medeterranean waters during the Greco-Roman era. Ormerod has some success in uniting a horde of disparate sources into a narrative of piracy in this period, no small task. However, analysis of the phenomonon is only made on the most basic of levels, the author failing to find broader trends, and terminologies are hazily established. Without strong defenitions the author is often led into discussing issues of warfare rather than piracy. However, the reviewer found this book to be of immense interest, and despite its failings has shed light on hitherto unknown areas such as the discussion of reprisals in Greek forieign policy. The author has made a commendable effort to bring together a number of difficult pieces of evidence with little prior scholarship to guide him.
2863019
Pachinko has acheived with Swamp what no one else has had the liver to attempt. The era of archaeology (CRM) being garbled with glory and gold has begun the overdue process of being expunged. A true reading of field work has finally come into view. Anyone need a munsell? Let's have a toast to Joe. Where is the sequel? Where are you?? Surely there is more to tell.
520595
This slim volume recounts a period of pervasive crime and corruption in New York harbor.  The events and certain of the persons were dramatized in "On the Waterfront" and the author also discusses the making of that movie.  Many of the events also seem, imo, to reappear in the Godfather trilogy. So much changed as a result of the reform efforts recounted in this book that it makes this period feel like ancient history although there are millions of people alive today who were alive back then. It is a very good reminder of how far we have come due to vigorous law enforcement and of course how easy it is to slip back. A remarkable subplot of the book was how federal labor laws designed to protect workers from exploitation enabled organized crime to gain incredible power by simply applying for union charters -- which appear to have been granted without any kind of investigation  -- and then using violence to compel both workers and businesses to accept whatever the new "union" demanded of them.