The Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient Civilizations

This was delivered on time as advertised and had the information as published.

Review - Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient CivilizationsThe Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient Civilizations is another of the delightful series from The Penguin Group. While definitely not a definitive work on the ancient civilizations, this book is an excellent over of the ancient civilizations. This book is a joy to just leaf through casually for a taste of the ancient civilizations.Like all it’s Penguin siblings, this book is well written, well formatted, well illustrated and full of outstanding hard to find maps illustrating and expanding on the points in the essays. The essays are brief and eclectic, but informative. They point the way to more expansion of knowledge. No pretense is made of being a complete history book.I recommend these, and this one especially, to individuals with a quest for quick, overview type knowledge of ancient civilizations.

This is a very fine collection of maps of the ancient world, and touches on the origin of civilization in many regions of the earth - would not expect any less from John Haywood. The paperback is also easily portable, and for its size it seems not to have sacrificed too much detail or readability. The price is definitely right as well.Honestly, if I had not discovered how fine the older, hardcover versions of Haywood's atlases are, I would have held on to this book for a long time. However, as of now I'm returning this book in favor of Haywood's earlier version (part of a series of which I own a couple other atlases. Please see my other reviews if you wish to see how I orgasm over the out of print stuff). This one is definitely the more convenient of the two, though, both in terms of availability and portability, and so I nevertheless recommend this atlas to anyone with an amateur interest in world history.

If you’re a devoted armchair historian like me with a strong interest in ancient history, this book ( perfectly designed ) will be not only indispensable, but your treat of the year.

This is a good book for the non-specialist. If you have a general interest in History in general and in Ancient History in particular, this can help put the cities and civilizations you read about in other books on the map. There is a very, very brief introduction to each civilization and very helpful maps.Best enjoyed toegether with some other history book, just like I am doing right now.

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.

One of the best, most concise and informative books on ancient history I've ever read. As a high school history teacher, this helped immensely with learning more about the content in a short yet detailed way. This is the content that allows me to tell my students about cool things in ancient history while also deepening my overall understanding of the subject.Cultures and parts of major civilizations are often summarized in 1-2 pages which really helps (shown in picture).

I expected something a little bigger. The maps are a bit small. Overall, the book covers the subject sufficiently for anyone not wanting a ton of information. It also covers a lot of geography. It was a gift for my brother and he is pleased.

Received this recently so am still introducing myself to it. But, as I have delved into the different sections, I have found the text full of good information and the maps clear and easy to study.I have other historical and archeological atlases and find their maps are sometimes too dense with information to be digestible. That is not a problem with this book, which takes the luxury of providing about 50 maps to cover the ancient period. The book is divided geographically to group maps relating to the Ancient Near East, Africa (more than just Egypt), Asia, Europe and the Americas.There is also a timeline that allows comparison of developments across the regions. This chart is most useful to track the different pace of development of each region.Penguin has separate historical atlases for ancient Greece, Rome and Egypt. These subjects are not covered in as much detail in this particular book although there is enough for a survey of these ancient societies.I have found this atlas to be of great benefit to my understanding of the ancient development of civilization in each region of the world.

One page had an error. The page ends in the middle of a sentence.Otherwise well done. Good introduction.

Thoroughly informative. A great stepping stone for in-depth study of specific cultures.

I am not happy with the format being offered by Penguin Atlases today. Had already met it with the Atlas of Rome. Very colourful but the format rather obscures the maps under consideration. However the reason I used the title for this review was that once more we find the insistence on the colonisation of the Pacific from the West. Still the idea is being promoted that people wandered across a land barrier and island hopped from Asia down to Australasia and from there to the islands. This is not at all reflected in the history of the Maori people who tell us they came from Canada. Among the Hawaiian people also the same route was used. Their history going back across land to Egypt, up the coast past Japan and around the north to the currents that flow in the Pacific down to the islands of Hawaii. What is wrong with the academics that they insist on their own ideas and not those of the people who made the journey. It is simply arrogance.

This comprehensive and informative work by John Haywood presents a helpful introduction to a wide variety of civilisations from all over the world. There's a preface plus an introduction entitled: 'What is Civilisation?. After that these are two pages of very helpful timelines. The rest of he work is divided into five sections followed by 'Further Reading', index and acknowledgements. The five sections are:1: The Ancient Near East. 2. The African Civilisations. 3. The First Civilisations of Africa. 4. The First European Civilisations. 5. The Ancient Americas. The information about the civilisations is accompanied by a whole host of helpful maps. and there are some very good illustrations.Besides being helpful in itself, this work forms an excellent companion and guide to further, more extensive research concerning any one of the civilisations the reader might be especially interested in. It's a valuable 'getting to know' work. 'Oh, look what those people did there so very long ago! This is wonderful! I must find out more about them.' Then the reader can search for more information on the internet and so on. We have here a valuable gate opening work, stimulating us to find out more about what built the world into what it has become. It's a gem.