Healy, Mark. The Ancient Assyrians.

(Elite series, 39) London: Osprey Publishing, 1991.

Most people have heard the word “Assyrians,” but most equally have no idea when their culture flourished, or where. The “when” is between 2,900 years and 2,600 years ago, more or less — after the Babylonians and before the Achaemenid Persians — and the “where” is in what used to be called the “Fertile Crescent,” up the broad shallow valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers from the Arabian Gulf and on to the northeastern Mediterranean coast.

Merrifield, Ralph. London: City of the Romans.

Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983.

This magisterial volume is an outgrowth of the change in the state of archaeology in postwar Britain, and especially in London. In the 1950s, a great many opportunities unfortunately were missed during the clearing and rebuilding of the devastation left in the city by the Blitz, to poke about and discover what could be found from earlier centuries — but people understandably had other things on their minds.

Green, Peter. Classical Bearings: Interpreting Ancient History and Culture.

NY: Thames and Hudson, 1989.

Green, now well into his eighties, has been a noted classicist nearly all his life, having been educated in the old classics tradition at Charterhouse and then taking a Double First at Trinity, Cambridge, followed by a professorial career in universities on both sides of the Atlantic.

Thomas, Chris (ed). London’s Archaeological Secrets: A World City Revealed.

New Haven: Yales University Press, 2003.

I’ve always been interested in London’s deep history — all those two thousand years of layers — and in searching for a good, recently published survey, I had high hopes for this oversized volume from the Museum of London’s Archaeology Service.

Pratchett, Terry. Pyramids.

NY: HarperCollins, 1989.

First off, it’s well known that Sir Terry is quite incapable of writing a bad book. This one, however, falls right in the middle of the pack: Perfectly readable, very funny in places, and with some pointed points to make regarding the anti-progressive nature of religion (a recurrent theme of Pratchett’s), . . . but still, on the whole, and not to put too fine a point on it, not nearly as engaging as his stories about the Witches or the City Watch.

Iggulden, Conn. Emperor: The Death of Kings.

NY: Delacorte, 2004.

This is the second volume in this novice author’s quadrilogy about the rise of Julius Caesar, and it has the same fundamental problem as the first one — Iggulden’s willingness to rewrite and pervert the known facts of history for his own convenience. The action here follows the supposed early careers of Gaius Julius and his closest friend, Marcus Brutus (the documented biography of whom Iggulden almost completely ignores), as they go off to posts as junior legionary officers following the death of the Consul Marius and the dictatorship of the Consul Sulla.

Iggulden, Conn. Emperor: The Gates of Rome.

NY: Delacorte, 2003.

Ever since I first became seriously interested in history (living overseas at the age of ten did that), I’ve also been an avid reader of historical fiction. A skillful author, one who understands both writing and history, can communicate a great deal about the past and can do it in an interesting and even absorbing way. Someone like Cecelia Holland can put solid meat on the bones. But there are a few basic rules which Iggulden, a first-time novelist, seems not to have grasped.

Bowersock, G. W., et al (eds). Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Postclassical World.

Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.

Though I shifted over to American studies in grad school for practical reasons, my original love in the field of history was late antiquity and early medieval and I’ve maintained that interest ever since. As in all areas of the social sciences, things change, both in methodology and in academic tastes, and this field is no different. Bowersock and his colleagues have attempted to bring together in a single volume a number of tools and resources that will allow someone who has been out of touch for a couple decades to become quickly aware of the present questions and controversies among classicists and medievalists — and they’re about half successful.