Customer Reviews

The Middle East under Rome

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

 

 

I was surprised by the colossal amount of well-documented, rich and detailed information on the many aspects of the Roman Middle East contained in this book. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in this subject. As I am only a curious, not a specialist in the field, I was forced to get a map of the region prior to reading the book, because the only map provided in it is far from satisfactory. It nevertheless deserves a five star rating.

Two Stars. Unfortunately, I did it again and judged a book by its book cover and a short review. After purchasing and reading the book, I consider the author very knowledgable in his field, but unfortunately has poor writing skills. First of all he does not understand that the basic premise of a book is to tell a story; and a story needs a beginning, middle and end. This book has no beginning, and hardly any ending.

The author is an Academic and simply throws the reader into the center of Middle Eastern Rome without first clearly explaining the history of the area [should have been a first chapter]. The author also neglects to place critical written accounts extracted from ancient Greek and Roman documents directly into the book, not realizing that readers want to see what people who actually lived there say, and not just the words of an author 2000 years later.

Also, why write a 380 page book , and then add 300 pages of reference documentation? This is called book padding. Whats next, writing a ten page book with 490 additional pages of references? Another problem is that the author constantly repeats the following "but we do not know for sure" ad infinitum, as if he directly copied his student notes and threw it into a book.

The Author is an Academic, but wins no awards for being able to write a book.