Book Review: The Complete Idiot's Guide to Ancient Greece by Eric D. Nelson and Susan K. Allard Nelson

ISBN: 1592572731

Published: February 1st, 2005

Publisher: Alpha

Read from February 13th to March 16th, 2012

Synopsis from Goodreads:

A modern examination of the ancient world.The incredible influence of Ancient Greek culture on everything from science to literature to politics continues to be relevant—and hotly debated. In The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Ancient Greece, you are invited to meet the Ancient Greeks and to understand their legacy by entering their world.Profiles the most important contributions of Greek culture, including mythology, philosophy, medicine, and the Olympic gamesIncludes further reading and travel information to help in planning a personal Odyssey.

Review:

This book is absolutely brilliant for everyone who wants to know more about ancient Greece.  Greek culture has always been something I've been interested in, but most of the stuff I'd learned before had only been about the Greek myths.  This book just touches on Greek myths.  The large majority of the book is focused on Greek history and culture.  Greek culture obviously involves the Greek myths, but there's so much more to it than that.  There was so much in this book that I had never known before.  There was so much of Greek culture that I had never known because most of what I'd read before had only been centered around Greek myth.

I also had no idea about most of the Greek history.  Ancient Greece really does have a very interesting history, and the book presented it in a way that was very easy to understand, which was nice.  The history could have been presented in a very confusing way since there were so many various city-states and empires and other things over the course of Greek history.  The book does a really good job of helping you keep track of who's who, and there are maps that really helped me figure out where each group was from.

This book is definitely a great read for anyone interested in the subject.  It's made me want to go out and learn even more about ancient Greece.