By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean: The Birth of Eurasia

Very, very interesting book. I think Mr. Cunliffe has done an amazingly good job here, presenting just enough archaeological and historical fact and supporting it adequately for an interested layman. To me, Central Asia and its connection to East and West was an empty space interspersed with question marks. After this book, the space is filled with peoples and events, though the questions marks seem to have multiplied! The book is intended to be educational as well as interesting. Chapters are introduced, presented, and summarized: for someone who wants to retain some of what he's read, this book is a wonderful gift. One of the very few books I've seen that has enough maps to keep me oriented. And enough photos to give a feel for the high level of art/artisanship of bronze age craftsmen, to pique one's interest.. I can't praise the author enough for his careful selection of maps and photos, it is a very strong feature of this book. There is the occasional confusion of "east" with "west" in the text, but if you follow the maps, they'll not confuse you. Aimed at general audiences, I hazard a guess that this book will interest specialists as well. I know I'll read it more than once, and will try to investigate some of Mr. Cunliffe's recommended readings. I'm sure Mr. Cunliffe is Dr. Cunliffe, but I'm unable to find this stated in the book or the cover paper.. I've used Mr. in my review, trying to respect his example.

I am torn by the star rating for this book. For the early sections, written on the basis of archaeological knowledge from which Cunliffe draws an erudite and highly readable story, and the closing part, where he takes a big step back and tries to see overarching patterns, it is excellent and, if it were possible I would give it six out of five stars. For the intervening parts, seemingly drawn predominantly from written histories he is less inspiring and, perhaps because of the huge span that this work encompasses, the condensing of details can at time be confusing. Deciding what should be left out of a work of this gigantic scope must be difficult and , no doubt, all readers will have their own regretted omissions; one of mine was that he did not mention, in an otherwise nice summary, Mongol failures against Burma/Myanmar and Japan. However, this is still a good book which may leave readers looking at the world in a slightly different way.

As an armchair historian this book zeros in on my favorite subject-the history of interaction between Europe and Asia. This puts all my reading in the field in perspective like no other book I've read. I'll admit the first half drags,with no written record the tale has to be pieced together from scattered clues and much surmise(guesses) relying mainly on archeological digs. One more burial excavation and I was gonna scream. I will admit he laid the neccessary groundwork and I was glad I hung in. Underpinnings established,once Cunliffe gets to the rise of predatory nomadism and the spread of Greek trading settlements in the Black Sea,both taking place in the first millennium B.C.,he has much more data to work with and the tale comes alive. The read stays fascinating thru his chosen cutoff point for the history around 1400 A.D. with the end of major Mongol incursions,the era of the Black death and the triumph of the ocean as the preferred route of interaction between east and west. One caveat with this book and others of this type is that maps made for hard bound don't cut it on a Kindle-the map print was almost unreadable(too small) and the shading types used to differentiate areas were hard to tell apart. Come on guys. Whining aside,this was a heck of a book-recommended. Added note:I normally skip the bibliography unless I'm into the subject. For hard core aficionados of esoterica Cunliffe's extensive guide to further reading is a treasure. Putting in an obvious extra effort he includes sources that don't require access to a major university library-like books available thru the Amazon book store-e.g. The Great Game:The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia or online sources like the journal,The Silk Road-e.g. Vol. 8 has an interesting article on qanats(underground equivalent of Roman aqueducts) and one on the composite bows that facilatated the massive sucess of nomad conquests. Extra points.

Very well-written work with many illustrations and, what is more important, good maps. Several times during the narrative the author confuses the cardinal directions, for example, saying that the Caspian Sea is west of the Don River. But all the blunders are obvious and are easily identified as such. Western Europe is given less attention in the book, than the Middle East, Central Asia and China. Wherever the author touches upon the matters of the Western Europe he tends to over-simplify his explanations. But this can be excused, as there are so much available on the European history.

By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean: The Birth of Eurasia provides a solid survey of ancient history from the interesting perspective of steppe nomad interactions with sedentary cultures. I am almost halfway through reading this book. I will have more to add when I finish. However, I want to present a few errors that I have spotted. p. 204 paragraph 3 Fars province is listed as southwest of Elam. It should be listed as southeast. p. 206 illustration 6-1 says Persian King Cyrus was captured at Babylon in 539 BC. As King Cyrus was victorious in taking Babylon at that time it does not make sense to say he was captured. p.209 says "When Cyrus sent the exiled Jews back to their homeland, he encouraged them to rebuild the Temple of Jerusalem, an act that prompted the prophet Isaiah to proclaim Cyrus was favored by their god, Yahweh." Isaiah was an 8th Century prophet of Israel. It would be more proper to say that the writer of 3rd Isaiah proclaimed Cyrus was favored by their god, Yahweh.

If you are going to read one "big think" book this year, consider By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean. Unless you have been paying pretty close attention to journals like Science or keeping up with archeology, you might not realize that the past has changed. Cunliffe captures a huge amount of scholarship (some obscured in the West by Soviet-era origins) and in doing so fills in many of the gaps in the broader, "Western" historical narrative. And demonstrates how it is a piece of a much bigger whole. The arrival of the successive waves of horse-raiders into Europe makes so much more sense in the context of observable, continent-wide patterns, e.g. The bibliography is also detailed and full of suggestions for further reading. Time to get out your good maps!

Cunliffe's earlier "Between Two Oceans" was a totally mind-blowing experience, elegantly written, fluent, a true reading adventure. Thanks to it, I've incorporated much more pre-history and archaeology into my reading agenda. His "Scythians," by contrast, was a rather academic exercise, and I read it with more than an occasional yawn. "By Steppe..." combines overarching historical exploration with an occasional dead slow pace and TMI, and is a useful but not always gripping read. Its major shortcomings, in my view, are two. The first is one Cunliffe explicitly cops to, an unwillingness to address linguistic questions, such as, for example, the spread of Indo-European languages. A second, related, flaw is the vagueness with which he addresses the period of IE arrival in Europe, which I understand to have been about 4,500 years ago. How did IEs spread throughout Europe, by what means (invasion or cultural dominance); how did the various IE linguistic groups consolidate or separate, and to what extent did they absorb or adapt to existing populations. Perhaps answers to these questions may exist in other works, but for an amateur historian myself new to the reading of pre-history, it seems that a work apparently intending to be exhaustive should include at least suggestions of answers to these questions. Still, well worth a read though it requires some time and work.

Any book by Barry Cunliffe is worth reading because of his wide expertise in archaeology. He is also a skillful writer. This book is especially interesting because it deals with the Silk Road and all the cultures it touched. There is much information on China and Mongolia with which most non-specialist readers will not be familiar as well as more familiar, but well-presented material, on the Levant, Greece, and Rome.Russia, and the various steppe cultures. One especially valuable part of this book is the annotated bibliography at the end.