the great sea a human history of the mediterranean

However, once you understand what you are getting with this book-an overview of a bunch of places throughout an absolutely massive swath of time, you’ll forgive the author (it’s not his fault I don’t know much about prehistory). My regret, perhaps, is that he did not spend more time on the pre-history part of it, because that really was where I learned the most (I’m not terribly well-versed in prehistory). The author does, perhaps, bounce around a bit from local to local, but the Mediterranean is a big place, and there is a lot happening at any one time. In this book, the Mediterranean is the core which binds the rest of the book together.

This wasn’t a book where I already knew everything I was being told so… yawn. That being said, I was rather amazed by how the author still managed to not only give an overview, but give readers plenty of information they may have never really encountered before. Now, that’s a whole lot of years, and while this book is long, it’s really not long enough to go too in depth in any one period or timeline. The Great Sea tells the story of the Mediterranean, starting in 22000BC up to the year 2010. However, this book looked interesting, and the reviews were good so why not. I like all the chunky bits and weird stuff that usually gets glossed over when someone’s giving brief vignettes on topics. I’m not really big on historical overviews.

I wasn’t really sure what I was getting into when I read this book.

The great sea a human history of the mediterranean