The Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient Civilizations

by John Haywood

Book Overview

This new historical atlas - richly illustrated with photographs, artwork recreations and full-colour maps - explores the world's earliest civilisations from the first farming settlements of Mesopotamia, via Egypt, Greece and Rome, to the civilisations of the Far East, Europe and America. Informatively written, and ideal for both students and the general reader, it plots the rise and fall of empires, the nature of different societies and the evolution...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0141014482
• ISBN13: 9780141014487
• Release Date: October 2005
• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Length: 144 Pages
• Weight: 0.81 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 7.0" x 9.6"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Start here.....

Wonderful overview and introduction to the cultures of ancient civilization. Of note is the inclusion of the "ancient" mesoamerican cultures from the 13th-14th centuries. (...some books fore go these cultures due entirely to European chronology.) Split into 5 parts each distinct culture receives a couple of paragraphs explaining their origins and high points. The author mostly focuses on the geographic and military realities while acknowledging intellectual and agricultural breakthroughs. As noted in other reviews the maps and presentation are outstanding! I love the color, cover, size, paper quality, text, and font of this book. You can't go wrong for $13. This is the best place to start before reading whole texts dedicated to the Sumerians, et al.

Excellent introduction to ancient civilizations

As an atlas, maps feature prominently in this slim overview, and they are very good -- interesting, informative, and well-designed. Ancient Mesopotamia gets the most attention, deservedly so, though ancient civilizations on all continents (except Australia) receive good introductory treatment. This is a slim volume, and lacks depth, but for what it is -- an atlas and an introduction -- it is first-rate. The maps really make the book. My only quibble, a minor one, is that a more extensive bibliography would have been helpful. Highly recommended.

Penguin Historical Atlas - Ancient Civilizations

Adequate. Interesting and clear illustrations. (No one, of course, is going to agree with materials which had to be excluded in order to fit the estqablished perimeters.) Not as brilliant as Colin <cEvedy's first edition of your ATLAS OF ANCIENT HISTORY, but very useful. (I gave away at least a dozen sets of McE's first edition. His Second Edition is just not as wittily written, but it's still the best on the market.) I like the span of history and the comparision potentials among the ancients in Haywood. Not a bedtime read, but good.

Neat book, size and great maps

Very neat historical atlas. Excellent maps and interesting pictures on the sides. Civilizations are dealt with in brief 2-page summaries. This book obviously only intends to be an introduction to larger studies by other authors, and it accomplishes its objective well enough. The reader will surely feel inclined to further his or her research into one of the many early civilizations discussed here. Broad in scope, limited in depth, but pays off with the illustrations. A little setback, though, is its inclination to pay service to political correctness is -unfortunately- present in the text. I would have preferred a little more text-space on European and Near Eastern civilizations and less on the Asian ones, too foreign to my cares (should I be sorry for being honest? I don't think so).

A very thorough piece of work

I bought four atlases from Penguin recently. This one, New Penguin Altas of Ancient History (McEvedy), N.Pen. Atlas of Medieval His. (McEvedy), and The Pen. Historical Atlas of Ancient Rome (Scarre). They are all thin and small (under 150 pages and around 10" x 7". This was the best of all four. I found the articles and maps to be very good. This was the first atlas I found to show exactly how Meso-American Empires were related. I also liked the coverage of the ancient Middle East. I love to read history and this book had new stuff I hadn't found. And it is nice to have it all in one place (might have taken me weeks or months to find all of this on the Internet). Very happy with this book