Two more books from the reading pile to review…
ALEXANDER THE GREAT: JOURNEY TO THE END OF THE EARTH
Written by Norman F. Cantor
Damn Norman Cantor and his mastery of succinct writing!
In every Cantor book I’ve read, he has managed to condense a large topic into a concise, readable, straightforward, entertaining and informative work that tells you everything you need to know on the topic being covered, without disappearing down boring, irrelevant, or confusing tangents. Alexander the Great is no different: it’s the best all-in-one guide you’ll ever need for one of history’s most famous individuals.
My only complaint is that he tries to raise certain parallels to the modern world that are extremely pointed and fascinating…but they DO threaten to take us down one of those tangents Cantor usually avoids. Frankly, the modern-day Afghanistan-compared-to-Alexander’s-Afghanistan is a thick book begging to be written…hopefully by Cantor himself. But at the last moment, it threatens to pull the reader out of what is an engrossing-yet-concise summation of the ancient world’s most famous warlord.
Engrossing is the key word. For such a short book, it’s packed with a multitude of cultural, social, economic, and anthropological detail…so much so that you can’t quite believe it’s all been successfully compressed into such a compact work. Neverthess, this a book that every student of antquity shouldn’t do without…and it’s easily my favourite Norman Cantor book to date.
1492: THE YEAR THE WORLD BEGAN
Written by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto
It tries to be a Norman Cantor book…but it makes the mistake Cantor avoids.
The thesis at the heart of 1492 — and one I’m inclined to agree with — is that the year marks the end of the isolation that deliniates the ancient world from the modern world. Thanks to the mass migration, exploration, and explusion of peoples across Europe, Asia, and the Atlantic Ocean, the end result is the cross-cultural contamination & exchange that would eventually form the basis of our modern, inter-connected world. The evidence is divided into discreet, geographical and biographical chapters that support this thesis with great alacrity.
But just as the reader becomes engrossed in the argument, the author’s enthusiasm begins to take him down paths that scream “tangent”. The detours aren’t exactly boring, but they reduce the thrust of the argument by getting too bogged down in tiny details and relationships that try too hard to provide extra background colour. In the end, they simply slow down the narrative.
It’s a solid work, and it’s one that proves to be invaluable to the study of the period. But if it had only been tightened up at the editing stage, it would be even more effective as a tool of scholarship, and as an enjoyable read in its own right. Slow and steady may win the race on many occasions, but sometimes you can be too slow for your own good.
