Customer Reviews

Lost Cities

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This was one of my daughter's favorite books when we studied ancient history. I had to read the text aloud to her because it was beyond what she could comprehend on on her own. However, it managed to keep her attention, which is testament to how engaging and well-written Bahn's text is. The photos are stunning.

I particularly liked how geographically widespread the profiled cities are. Too many archaeology books focus on only the sites in the Mediterranean area. Bahn includes cities in sub-Saharan Africa, the Far East, Oceania, North & South America, and Northern Europe.

There is a world map included in the appendix, so I did not have an issue with not knowing where the sites were located. Do people really need to have Australia, Japan, Italy, etc. specifically labeled as such? If so, that's a testament to their own geographical illiteracy.

If you are reading a book on ancient cities, wouldn't you want to know where thier present day geographic loction is? If so, do not buy this book!

It is frustrating when you are reading about a geographic location, and you have no idea where in the world they are writing about- and pulling out your atlas to read a book is a bit much. They do point it out on an un-labeled outline of a current country, but since I don't know what every country looks like from thier outline, I had no idea where it was.

Maybe I would have enjoyed it better if they would have included that information. Save yourself the money and google it.