The Imaginary Realms of

Gilbert M. Stack

The Persian Empire by John W. Lee

Be careful when you decide to read this book. This isn’t the Persia that fought with Rome or that went head-to-head with Byzantium before the armies of Islam rode out of Arabia and conquered it. This is the original Persian Empire, founded by Cyrus the Great and eventually defeated by Alexander the Great. This is the original bogeyman of the west. The Persia of Darius and Xerxes who invaded Greece and battled at places like Marathon and Thermopylae. And it’s a totally fascinating polity to study.

First off, Lee does an excellent job of setting the scene, reminding readers that most of what westerners know about Persia came through Greek eyes and therefore suffers from a bias of seeing the empire as a great and frightening monolith trying to swallow their world. Lee succeeds in showing the empire in its own right for good and for ill and explaining its strengths and weaknesses as it first expanded and then pivoted to try and maintain stability and territorial integrity. In doing so, he explodes a lot of myths that have come into existence, mostly in response to more modern political movements attempting to use ancient Persia for their own ends. For example, the Persians did keep slaves as did most everyone else in the world at that time. They also afforded wealthy and politically connected women a greater amount of rights and influence than has been commonly believed—certainly more so than Athens did at this time. Lee also takes the time to examine Persian culture and the diversity of the many parts of its empire—most of whom were subjects, not Persians.

I think the part I enjoyed the most was Lee’s explanation of how the success of Persian rulers in creating peace and stability within their empire put them at a disadvantage when Alexander the Great invaded. Alexander’s army was packed with experienced hoplites and generals. Persia’s army was mostly composed of raw recruits and of leaders who had not led men to war before. Persia had much greater resources and they learned from their losses, but ultimately that wasn’t enough to preserve them from conquest by Alexander the Great.

Herodutus by Elizabeth Vandiver

Herodutus is often called the Father of History because he created a new genre of philosophy or literature that evolved into the genre of scholastic investigation that we call history. In this superb Great Courses book, Elizabeth Vandiver walks the reader through just about everything we know about Herodutus, his famous work, and the scholarly debates around what he accomplished, how accurate he was, and whether or not we should even call him an historian. Just for the record—we should. He wrote an account of events that he believed happened (indeed, most of it did) and he went to great lengths to verify where possible these accounts through witness testimony speaking with people who were actually there or who talked to people (like their grandfathers) who were actually there.

It’s truly an amazing work crafted by an amazing writer who inspired others to attempt to get to the truth of the matters they wrote about it. Vandiver does an amazing job of conveying this monumental work with its glories and failings to the reader. She also places everything in the context of Herodutus’ times and never forgets to show how academics have struggled with understanding these issues. This is a thoroughly approachable guide to one of the great works of all time.

A Historian Goes to the Movies: Ancient Rome by Gregory Aldrete

This is the sort of book that puts the “great” in the “Great Courses”. Aldrete looks at more than ten movies focused on Ancient Rome and uses them to teach us little bits of trivia about the ancient republic and empire. Along the way, he also tells us many interesting facts about the making of the movies. Some (most) are blockbusters like Ben Hur, but he goes to the other extreme as well looking at Monty Python’s Life of Brian. Overall, this is just a very fun book.

The Rise and Fall of the British Empire by Patrick N. Allitt

It’s hard to study the world history of the past few centuries without encountering the British Empire which was so encompassing that the British could proudly proclaim that the sun never set upon it. This Great Courses series attempts to look at the empire in its totality, which it does by bouncing around the globe in different time periods and observing how different pieces of the empire were obtained, evolved, and eventually left again. So the study is interesting, but for me, I never felt like it was adequately pulled everything together. Rarely did I feel as if I was reading about one empire. Instead, we were always looking at various pieces of it.

I also would have liked to have had a longer exploration of the comparisons of the British Empire to others around the world—Russia/Soviet, China, Aztec, Rome, Carthage, the list goes on and on. I also would have enjoyed a much more thorough look at the impacts—positive and negative—the empire had on the regions it ruled and the globe. Allitt makes a stab at this, but I would have preferred much more detail. Finally, I would have liked substantially more detail on why the empire was viewed as necessary in Britain and how they held onto it (from a domestic/political perspective) for so long.

Overall, a good course that left me wanting much more on the topic.

Atlas of a Lost World by Craig Childs

This book reminds me of Barry Lopez’s Arctic Dreams. At its core, Childs is sharing a very personal experience of nature in North America. On this level alone, it is a beautiful experience taking the reader from the isolation of the glaciers in the far north to a different kind of isolation in the hot and humid swamps of Florida. But Childs gives us much more than this for he also offers a continuous imagining of how our distant ancestors must have first experienced this continent. He leads the reader into the psyche of those first crossing the land bridge and helps us to understand why they might have come and why they pushed on through such inhospitable terrain. Along the way, he helps us to envision the megafauna they encountered, the climate challenges they had to overcome, and the very personal losses they suffered along the way. They were human, after all, with dreams and hopes and fears, family, friends and rivals.

Interspersed seamlessly throughout the narrative is the modern archeology that helps us to understand these ancient peoples. He doesn’t shy away from the controversies, but he also doesn’t get bogged down in them. In many ways, the controversies help him paint his picture of a lost world, making it feel even more real.

If you have any interest in the ice age and what it took to survive it, or on the peoples who pushed past the glaciers to make a livelihood for themselves and their families, or on the creatures they encountered, the tools they used, or the patterns of their lives, this is a great book. But if you happen to be an author who is considering writing about this period, I would go so far as to say this is a must read.

1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed by Eric H. Cline

It’s common for scholars to talk about significant downturns in civilization in the Bronze Age. One of the most famous collapses was that of Mycenean Greece. Empires rise and fall. What Cline does in this book is take a broad look at all the major bronze age cultures of the Eastern Mediterranean in the centuries leading up to 1177 B.C., showing how a combination of climate change (centuries long periods of drought), earthquakes, pestilence, and invasions rocked the increasingly sophisticated international economy leading to a collapse of all the major powers in the years surrounding 1177 B.C. It’s a wonderful work which will teach the reader a lot about the Bronze Age civilizations and why they fell.

The Buried Book by David Damrosch

This book can easily be broken into three parts and a rather rambling epilogue. The first part details the lives and careers of two British Museum archaeologists—George Smith and Hormuzd Rassam. The second takes a look at the court life in ancient Babylon in roughly 2500 BCE. The third is a short summary of the Epic of Gilgamesh. And the fourth is a brief account of the epic’s influence in modern times. The result is not a book on the rediscovery of the first great epic poem, but a rather jumbled set of accounts on the above topics. To give Damrosch credit, he starts very well, but the whole account quickly loses steam as the book seems to veer off topic repeatedly. The little side routes are interesting, but they distract from the overall sense of unity that I expected the book to achieve. At many times I kept asking myself when the Epic of Gilgamesh was going to reappear in Damrosch’s account.

The Triumph of Christianity by Bart D. Erhman

This book offers a great set of lectures describing how Christianity grew from a small group of illiterate day laborers to the dominant religion in the Roman Empire in just 400 years. Despite the title, this is not a parade of examples of how wonderful Christianity is—“triumph” is literal, not a qualitative judgment. Christianity did defeat its competitor religions even if most of them didn’t realize they were in competition with it.

There are a lot of highlights that really made this course stand out among the various Great Courses texts. For one thing, the author teaches students the majority of whom are evangelicals and he sprinkles his lectures with insights into how they view early Christianity. For example, they have a modern understanding of the term messiah, not the original Jewish understanding. (More on that later.) And like many religious adherents, they assume that their faith started in the same form it is in today. These points of understanding were useful starting places in shaking off the modern world to gain insight into how the ancients thought and reacted.

One of the strengths of the book is Erhman’s understanding of what it meant to be a pagan polytheist. They recognized many gods and did not seek to exclude the worship of other gods. This was a stark difference from the early Christians who actively sought to convert and get the converts to abandon all the other gods out there. This is, ultimately, why Christianity triumphed. Erhman quite clearly demonstrates how a very few number of converts each generation became millions over the early centuries. Because the pagans weren’t converting back, every conversion strengthened early Christianity and weakened the pagans.

He also explains why the Jewish people were not convinced by Christian arguments. It all comes down to the term “messiah”. The messiah was expected to be a worldly leader who would triumph over the enemies of the Jewish people and give them their independence again. Jesus was the opposite of a successful worldly leader. He had been executed by the Romans. Calling him the messiah made no sense.

But these are just a couple of examples as Erhman marches through the early centuries of the growing faith and explains convincingly how it rose to a position of dominance. The one topic I would have liked to see that he did not address was Christianity’s similarities to the mystery religions of the period, but while I expected him to discuss the issue, the lectures are so well structured that I didn’t notice he had skipped it until after I had finished the book.

The History of Ancient Rome by Garrett G. Fagan

I read a lot of history and so when I read a massive survey like this Great Courses book, I look for how the events are framed and whether or not the author gives me some new insight into the material. I very much enjoyed how Fagan did both of these things.

By far the strongest part of the book is his coverage of the generations long revolution that transformed Rome from a Republic into what is effectively a monarchical empire. Fagan expertly shows how each major player starting with the Grachus brothers made small but important changes to the ways in which the Republic’s government functioned that ultimately combined to fracture the Republic and return it to a monarchy in all but name. Many of these changes were not technically illegal—they were contrary to tradition—and they “justified” ever bigger breaches of tradition (under the excuse of preserving that very same tradition) by the opposition. It is difficult not to see parallels to the United States where, as in Rome, politicians make adjustments to the way things are traditionally done to advance their short-term interests and then seem shocked when their opponents do the same. The ultimate result for Rome was the loss of their Republic.

Fagan’s discussion of the Empire is much more general as he looks at longer term trends. If you want an emperor-by-emperor account, this part of the book is not for you. But if you want to look at major themes it’s a very helpful overview. Any way you look at it, this is a wonderful survey of Rome.

Living History by Robert Garland

Garland attempts to give the reader a glimpse into what life was like in the past by focusing on individuals and telling their stories. The result is mostly a collection of short biographies of important people from ancient and medieval times. The bios are interesting, but there didn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason to the subject matter and I really don’t think that “living history” is an accurate description of the course. If you are interested in roughly 24 short biographies of important figures from the past, you’ll enjoy this book.

Writing the Bible by Martien Halvorson-Taylor

This is what a Great Courses book is supposed to be. Rather than get bogged down in faith stories as so many historical books looking at the bible do, Halvorson-Taylor jumps right into the problems of discerning where and how the books of the Old Testament were written and compiled and in doing so teaches us a lot about the history of the regions.

People tend to think that the great religions of the world began in their present forms rather than evolved over time. The thing I liked most about Writing the Bible was how Halvorson-Taylor shows again and again how the interests of the people writing about periods that happened centuries earlier put their own worldview on to the historical actors. A really interesting example was King Solomon, who is presented in the Old Testament as having abandoned his monotheism and worshipped other gods. However, those accounts were written centuries after his death. It is much more likely, based on an analysis of the texts and when they were written, that Solomon ruled at a time when the Jews were not yet staunchly monotheistic—something that later authors either didn’t know or couldn’t accept.

Another fascinating insight conveyed by Halvorson-Taylor was how the written word did not originally appear to be given the same trustworthiness as the spoken word, but that over time with the literate gaining in influence, the written word became viewed as much more dependable.

All in all, this is a wonderful book. I hope she does a sequel on the New Testament.

The Fate of Rome by Kyle Harper

Most people think that all of the broad outlines of the ancient world are already known to historians, but in that last fifteen or twenty years an important new understanding of the problems that beset the Roman Empire is adding considerably to the debate over why Rome fell. I first became aware of this debate about ten years ago when scholars started to note that an event referred to as the Justiniac Plague was not a relatively isolated event in Constantinople but a crippling empire wide event on a par with the Medieval Black Death. Since then, much new information has come out and in this book, Kyle Harper looks at the related issues of climate change and disease in the last few centuries of the Roman Empire.

Why was the third century so difficult?—cooling temperatures and a consequent rise in diseases like small pox which devastated both the population and the economy. Things got a little better during the reigns of Diocletian and Constantine before the temperature dropped again and disease returned to ravage the land. Justinian’s attempt to reconquer the west might have been doomed to failure anyway, but it didn’t help matters to have unusual volcanic activity cool the earth and set the stage for a surge in bubonic plagues that lasted at least two centuries. It’s hard to defend your new lands when the size of your legions is now one-third what it had been with no way to recover the numbers. It’s hard to keep funding your government when the tax base has just plummeted (leading Justinian to raise taxes to impractical levels).

This is a fascinating book with perhaps a little too much detail for the casual reader. It doesn’t lessen other issues that are discussed as contributing to the fall of Rome (like poor leadership) but it certainly goes a long way to show that the earth itself played a heavy role in bringing down the west’s most successful empire.

The History and Archaeology of the Bible by Jean-Pierre Isbouts

I was very excited to start this book. A lot of the histories I have been reading lately have had moments in which they shed light on biblical events and I really looked forward to having someone take me through the bible, adding historical context to major stories, but while Isbouts did do that, it never felt like it was his primary purpose as I listened to this audiobook.

Isbouts really just tells the biblical story. For the first six lectures (25% of the course) he does little more than make reference to other ancient stories with similar themes as he walks the listener through Genesis and Exodus. I would recommend simply skipping these first six lectures.

After that, matters improved somewhat, especially when Isbouts gets into discussion of the northern and southern Jewish kingdoms, their origins, and to what extent they were truly united under Saul, David, and Solomon. I also found his section on Pontius Pilate and King Herod and the extent of their various authorities quite fascinating. But overall, I felt like the lectures were heavy on the story and light on the historical context.

Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic Age by Jason McInerney

There are a lot more books on Alexander the Great than on the age he began, so this Great Courses book was a welcome opportunity to take a look at how Alexander’s conquests influenced so much of the world. It includes a couple of chapters on Alexander, a few on the major successor states, and then starts to go much deeper, looking at topics like literature, philosophy, the idea of kingship, and the impact that the Hellenized world had on the development of Rome and the west. My favorite two chapters dealt with the Maccabean Revolt in Judea. Overall, this is a fascinating look at the world between the conquests of Alexander and Rome.

The Foundations of Western Civilization by Thomas F.X. Noble

I’ve been teaching Western Civilization for nearly twenty years now and I always enjoy listening to another expert talk about the development of the west. Noble gives a highly coherent account of why western culture is important and of the many factors that contributed to developing it. He doesn’t just spend his time discussing the major players—Greeks and Romans and the developing states of England and France. He takes the time to explore the important contributions of many of the smaller groups of ancient peoples like the Hebrews and the Phoenicians, and other European peoples such as the Holy Roman Empire, the Iberian kingdoms, the Islamic states, the Byzantines, the various Italian city-states and kingdoms. This gives a broad view of the developing political, economic, and intellectual developments that led to the creation of the western civilization we now know. This is a very good introduction to an important topic.

Our Oldest Companions Pat Shipman

I’ve never been a big dog person, but since my niece got a puppy who stays with my family during the day so my mother-in-law can watch her, I have started to warm to our four-legged friends. This book examines what we know and can speculate about how humans and dogs began a friendship that has lasted tens of thousands of years. In doing so, it also looks quite a bit at our earliest forebearers.

There was a ton of information here that came as a surprise to me. For example, apparently many Neanderthal had blue eyes and freckles. (Not sure why that hasn’t come up in my previous readings.) By far the best part of the book for me was the many chapters spent on Australia, which has a very unique settlement pattern that notably didn’t include dogs in the beginning.

Overall, this is a great book to introduce you to the origins of humans interacting with dogs.

The Death of Caesar by Barry Strauss

Strauss offers a quick guide to the last days of one of the most famous historical figures in the west—Julius Caesar. He gives short bios of all the major players and lays out what we know about how the conspiracy to kill Caesar began and was carried out. He argues persuasively that this was not a rash and amateurish act, but a well-planned assassination. (It has often been described as amateurish because the conspirators did not make adequate preparations for the aftermath of their successful plot.) For me, however, the most interesting part was in the final chapter when Strauss describes Augustus’ eventual triumph after Caesar’s death and the establishment of what Strauss describes as a limited monarchy. Most historians agree that Augustus had near absolute power, but Strauss’ point was that he continued to pretend that the Republic was functioning. It’s not until Diocletian at the end of the third century that we get an emperor who is overt in his exercise of absolute authority. It’s an interesting notion, even though I don’t think I agree with it.

The Mysterious Etruscans by Stephen L. Tuck

The Etruscans may have been a fully indigenous people of the Italian Peninsula. They are generally considered mysterious because we don’t know very much about them, but after reading this Great Courses book, you’ll realize that we actually know an awful lot about them. They were major influencers of Rome and the modern world. In fact, a considerable amount of what we think of as Romans were actually Etruscan innovations such as the bridges and the roads, divination, gladiatorial games, and quite probably, living in city states, getting rid of kings, and so much more. In fact, much of what we think of as the great works of the Renaissance were actually building on Etruscan culture, not Roman. And much of modern society that we think was influenced by Rome was actually derived from their Etruscan neighbors and subjects. This is a very good book.

The Aeneid of Virgil by Elizabeth Vandiver

Elizabeth Vandiver has fast become one of my favorite Great Courses lecturers. She has a gift for walking the reader through very complex subjects and bringing out the richness of great works of literature. This time she looks at Virgil’s Aeneid, one of the most important epic poems in the western canon. She not only shows the brilliance of the poem and its tributes to the great epics of Homer, she helps the reader understand just why it was so important to Romans and to the societies that follow them. She makes me want to reread the epic thirty plus years after I first enjoyed it.

Greek Tragedy by Elizabeth Vandiver

There are two major benefits to this Great Courses text. The first is the obvious one, Elizabeth Vandiver walks the reader through the great tragedies of Ancient Athens not only outlining the plots of these plays but helping to visualize what is happening and showing how they evolve and compare to the other Greek tragedies. The second major benefit is what she teaches us about the ancient Athenians and their culture through these plays and in helping to put the events in the plays in their historical context. It’s a wonderful book.

The Odyssey of Homer by Elizabeth Vandiver

I’ve read The Odyssey more frequently than I have The Iliad. It’s always been primarily an adventure story for me and in addition to the text, I’ve enjoyed reading about the places that might have inspired the fabulous lands discovered in this poem. What Vandiver does in this Great Courses book is give you the substance behind the epic that makes it clear why this book has resonated with audiences for millennia and why the ancient Greeks turned to it again and again as a guide to proper behavior. For this is a book that explores in remarkable depth the meaning of what modern audiences would call proper hospitality. It also, and I’m shocked I never picked up on this on my own, depicts what happens to a land when all the fathers go away to war and never come back again. This is a wonderful exploration of one of the all-time great works of literature and is worth listening to again and again.

Great Mythologies of the World by Grant L. Voth, Julius H. Bailey, Kathryn McClymond, and Robert Andre LaFleur

I broke with my usual practice of listening to a Great Courses book straight through and listened to this volume a few lectures at a time over the course of a year. The reason for that is that this book actually manages to give an overview of the basic myths of several dozen cultures, breaking them up mostly by geographic region, and the similarities between so many of the myths made them tend to blur together when I listened to too many at a time. It’s really quite remarkable how similar so many of the world’s myths are at their root. And in the same vein, it is also remarkable that there are so many distinctive differences.

When you get a book on myths, there is usually a great deal of focus on one particular mythos—Greek, Norse, Celtic, etc. In this book, the most any culture gets are a couple of lectures. The authors keep moving throughout their region, picking up new stories and showing what links them to others and also what makes them distinctive. It’s really a wonderful collection.