The History of the Ancient World

From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome

By: Susan Wise Bauer

Narrated by: John Lee

Length: 26 hrs and 20 mins

Publisher's summary

A lively and engaging narrative history showing the common threads in the cultures that gave birth to our own.

This is the first volume in a bold new series that tells the stories of all peoples, connecting historical events from Europe to the Middle East to the far coast of China, while still giving weight to the characteristics of each country. Susan Wise Bauer provides both sweeping scope and vivid attention to the individual lives that give flesh to abstract assertions about human history. This narrative history employs the methods of "history from beneath" - literature, epic traditions, private letters, and accounts - to connect kings and leaders with the lives of those they ruled. The result is an engrossing tapestry of human behavior from which we may draw conclusions about the direction of world events and the causes behind them.

Download the accompanying reference guide.

©2007 Susan Wise Bauer (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

Problematic audio engineering

This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?

The content is excellent - the delivery by the reader was distracting and hard to follow. The author did an excellent job structuring the chronology, ensuring reader understood the fine line between historical fact and historical assumption. Overall - fascinating, informative, relevant but distracting to follow.

Who was your favorite character and why?

N/A

Who would you have cast as narrator instead of John Lee?

Mr. Lee is fine, the audio engineer needed to use more care at the beginning of speaking and with the phonetic inflections. Required numerous restarts, back up to discern the beginning statement or words..

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

Agreement - the book is another confirmation of how a Civilization will repeatedly fail to remember the price of individual or centralized power is the loss of personal freedom followed by internal erosion and disappearance of the civilization.

Interesting h. survey, but focused on base detail

This audio was, for the most part a good survey of ancient history. The frequent emphasis of base, immoral, and deviant behavior, however suggests another purpose besides that of an objective view of history, a view that would have its reader promote Sodom and Gomorrah to a paragon of natural human behavior. Still it was a pretty good concise treatment of the majority of human history. I would say to the author that your book is very compelling as it is and the overemphasis and graphic detail is not necessary to sell your book, it is good enough on its own. If you hadn't included so much detail of baser things I would have given your book five stars, and then gone out and purchased a hardback version.

OD for history buffs

Literally blow by blow of the rise and fall of the Mid-eastern, Mediterranean, Indian and Chinese empires from the beginning of recorded history to the fall of Rome. Appreciate the scholarly effort by Susan Wise Bauer to present the concordant dynasties from many disparate sources.
John Lee made tongue-twisting names of royalty and political geography sound easy. My hat is off to his linguistic agility.

Where’s the coverage of the reign and reform of the Flavian?

There is more to the Vespasian, Titus, Domitian saga. I know, because I have read it. I have also read many summaries of history like this one, and many of those summaries leave out that era. They don’t mention that Josephus was a Flavian pawn, what Josephus says about the flavians, and the significance of their battle and rule over their rivals, especially the Jews. Almost like it’s not there...but it is.

Very Well Narrated

I feel that this book provided a good review of ancient world history from a bird's eye view. the focus is largely on major world empires spending most of the time in Egypt, Persia, China, India, Greece and Rome.

While I don't have much to compare it to, I felt like the narrator did a great job with the pronunciation of the hundreds of different names and places that are in long dead languages.

I really enjoyed listening on my bicycle

I enjoyed this book, the narrator was very good and engaged. I recommend it highly

very informative.

I was able to learn much about the history of the world. thank you.

Fact or fiction?

The text is beautifully written. The organization of material is also an original and interesting approach. There is great detail and information about kings along with their successors. The author explains her approach to this presentation.
I have difficulty knowing where Bible and mythology begins and ends as it is threaded throughout the history. One can look at it this way. Civilization of ancient times thrived upon mythology and biblical teachings. But as we read this from our 21 st century perspective, some of us expect history to be based on facts based on evidence . There is no evidence for some of these stories. I enjoyed hearing the stories, but would like there to be more clarity on sources of information ,such as prefacing with phrases eg. ‘ according to Exodus, according to Homer , or as depicted by ancient artifacts etc. ‘
Present information in such a way that it is clear as to what happened and when , as well as what people believed happened in ancient times .

FASCINATING!

This book was a long journey, but the writing and especially the narration was superb. The narrator, John Lee, flowed through complicated names and places as if he had actually known the people and lived in the places. I would not have made it through this book if it were not for John Lee.

Interesting and informative read

Very interesting book, middle third dragged on but highly recommend if interested in history. Highly recommend to all.