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williamz4lyf's review against another edition
5.0
I really enjoyed this book. Reads like a historical tale and easy to follow and understand. I felt great compassion towards Carthage by the end of the book, and I'm looking forward to reading the decline and fall of the Roman Empire by Gibbons, to sort of close out this great historical tale for me. Great book
ameyawarde's review against another edition
4.0
I picked this up because I didn't know much about Carthaginian civilization, despite it being mentioned in Roman history so much. I certainly learned a lot, and while I would have liked to learn more about the day to day life in their culture, I recognize that maybe there just isn't much that survives. Plenty about their military history with Rome in here though! And goodness knows there's plenty of source material on that!
Good read overall.
Good read overall.
rc90041's review against another edition
2.0
An often punishing litany of names, dates, events that too often fails to see the forest for the trees.
The book begins with some promise, with the reader having incipient hopes of learning about a fascinating and generally overlooked counterpoint to familiar stories about the Roman rise and fall—but that promise is slowly smothered, or buried alive under the relentlessly granular torrent of trivia.
Miles seems unsure what type of history he is writing. Is it popular history, that is meant to give a broad sweeping thesis statement, backed up by some detail, but not overly burdened with minutiae? Or is this a highly specific, deeply sourced history, meant to establish an extremely detailed and specific chronology? Miles fails to decide, so the book is neither, but rather falls into some untenable platypusian evolutionary dead end: the deathly boring airport popular history. Almost no one will be happy with such an unholy beast.
What’s lacking here are the 30,000-foot views: What was the general theme of Carthaginian history? Why should we care? How does it matter today? What justifies general-interest readers devoting as much time and attention as Miles has decided to demand to this corner of ancient history? These are arguments, themes that must be made with some persuasion in a general-interest popular history like this.
Admittedly, I’m only about 2/3 of the way through so far, because after the first ~100 pages, I began to lose hope that larger, more significant themes would emerge from the avalanche of detail and reading this book became just another chore to be attended to: I found myself sighing as I picked it up, thinking, “Here we go again.” So perhaps the book builds to make some kind of argument or develop some forest-level themes at the end to explain why we should care about this mountain of detail when the world is nothing but endless mountains of details, but I doubt it.
One further point re the forest-for-the-trees thing: the book lacked a narrative drive. A popular history like this is, ultimately, a storybook; Miles got too mired in trying to faithfully document every name, battle, treaty, massacre of civilians by mercenaries, example of syncretism, etc., to tell a story, to offer some kind of guiding narrative that helped hold all the details together.
It’s my sense that it’s precisely because he didn’t decide on the clear narrative, theme, or argument that he was trying to make that he couldn’t make important editorial decisions about which facts were important to advance his narrative/argument, so, instead, he threw in everything—which overwhelms and dispirits the reader, who despairs that there is no real point being made by the unending wall of historical noise
Mostly this was an exercise in will and endurance, and it’s almost certain I would’ve abandoned this book early on if not duty-bound to soldier on because my book club picked it.
The book begins with some promise, with the reader having incipient hopes of learning about a fascinating and generally overlooked counterpoint to familiar stories about the Roman rise and fall—but that promise is slowly smothered, or buried alive under the relentlessly granular torrent of trivia.
Miles seems unsure what type of history he is writing. Is it popular history, that is meant to give a broad sweeping thesis statement, backed up by some detail, but not overly burdened with minutiae? Or is this a highly specific, deeply sourced history, meant to establish an extremely detailed and specific chronology? Miles fails to decide, so the book is neither, but rather falls into some untenable platypusian evolutionary dead end: the deathly boring airport popular history. Almost no one will be happy with such an unholy beast.
What’s lacking here are the 30,000-foot views: What was the general theme of Carthaginian history? Why should we care? How does it matter today? What justifies general-interest readers devoting as much time and attention as Miles has decided to demand to this corner of ancient history? These are arguments, themes that must be made with some persuasion in a general-interest popular history like this.
Admittedly, I’m only about 2/3 of the way through so far, because after the first ~100 pages, I began to lose hope that larger, more significant themes would emerge from the avalanche of detail and reading this book became just another chore to be attended to: I found myself sighing as I picked it up, thinking, “Here we go again.” So perhaps the book builds to make some kind of argument or develop some forest-level themes at the end to explain why we should care about this mountain of detail when the world is nothing but endless mountains of details, but I doubt it.
One further point re the forest-for-the-trees thing: the book lacked a narrative drive. A popular history like this is, ultimately, a storybook; Miles got too mired in trying to faithfully document every name, battle, treaty, massacre of civilians by mercenaries, example of syncretism, etc., to tell a story, to offer some kind of guiding narrative that helped hold all the details together.
It’s my sense that it’s precisely because he didn’t decide on the clear narrative, theme, or argument that he was trying to make that he couldn’t make important editorial decisions about which facts were important to advance his narrative/argument, so, instead, he threw in everything—which overwhelms and dispirits the reader, who despairs that there is no real point being made by the unending wall of historical noise
Mostly this was an exercise in will and endurance, and it’s almost certain I would’ve abandoned this book early on if not duty-bound to soldier on because my book club picked it.
xole's review against another edition
4.0
Not a bad history, but somewhat hampered by the confusion created because the Carthaginians named their kids like there were only ever four good names. Everybody is a Hasdrubal, Hannibal, Hamilcar, or Hanno. Of course, this is entirely not the author's fault. I found it difficult to connect with the material, and the descriptions of the various battles are hard to follow. I understand the limitations of available historical material, so this is perhaps understandable. Overall, it's a pretty good look at the rise and fall of Carthage, and I particularly liked the focus on the propagandist myth-making employed by both sides.