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.

Held my attention for many hours, but narrator was disappointing

Well-written broad review of major world civilizations, with enough about the personalities of the rulers to make it interesting and human. The author made it easy to see patterns repeating themselves without being ham-handed about it. I do wish she had provided a bit more about the history of India, but that's just my personal interest.
The narrator was just okay. Easy enough to listen to, but I was relying on him to get the pronunciation right on names I'd never heard before. He pronounced them with authority which sounded convincing, until he came to the Hebrew section, where I knew how the names were pronounced and noticed amateurish mistakes on his part. This really spoiled the book for me because I think if you're going to narrate a history for people trying to educate themselves further in the subject, you should at least get the pronunciations right!
In summary, this is is a good choice if you want an overview with simultaneous timelines of events in major world cultures, particularly those you weren't taught about in Western civ. Use reference materials outside the book if you want to be sure you're getting the real pronunciations of names and places.

To the author

Ms. Bauer,
Your work in this book is exceptional. You made a massive amount of information available, understandable and in your descriptions of the great people and societies, very relatable. Thank you for this effort - I look forward to listening to more of your works.
Bob Varley

Good over all but not easy to follow.

This was hard to follow with all the difficult to remember ancient names but over all interesting.

Complex ape brain chemistry

will future artificial intelligences worry about organic life forming singularities? we can only hope so.

Fantastic, broad to mid level brush strokes!

This book was fantastic - well written and narrated, for the student of history that wasn’t a high level view along with stories that keep the attention.

A good skim of a couple thousand years.

A nice job of covering such a large geographic landscape that covers our earliest times up through the end of the Roman era. The book includes Chinese history as well. I am a big fan of John Lee and he did a good job here as well. Good book.

couldn't get into it, even at chapter 30

struggled for a while because I love the narrator, but just couldn't finish it. sorry

Hits All the Good Spots

Incredibly detailed, but not overly so as to imitate a graduate course, hits all the important points in the time allotted, really great for metro rides in the morning and evening

Presumptuous, Unbalanced, & Shallow

It would have been less presumptuous and more accurate if the book were called "The history of The Mediterranean, Persia & China." The writer ignores the majority of the world, as if Russia, Northern Europe, The Americas, Africa (outside of Egypt & Carthage), Southeast Asia, or Pacific peoples simply don't exist, or don't have any history worth mentioning. Honest labeling would have gone a long way, as it is most certainly not a "History of the Ancient World," Rather a history of bits and pieces of the ancient world.
The second problem is an apparent religious bias. The reader cites the bible constantly as unquestioned historical fact and writes off for example, that there is no Egyptian record of any series of biblical plagues with the justification that "the Egyptians wouldn't have wanted to record it" - though as long as there is no biblical contradiction, she is fine with Egyptian records. At times the book reads more like it was written by a theologian than a historian.
The third problem is that the book isn't so much a history of the ancient world, as a chronicle of ancient rulers and who they fought. While that is important, it is also incomplete. The writer does mention different philosophies and theologies from time to time, but in an unbalanced way. For example, she talks a bit about ancient Egyptian theology, but when she comes to Zoroastrianism, she describes it as a set of "complex beliefs and even more complex rituals" and leaves it at that.The writer gives us almost no sense of culture, or the what life was like for ancient peoples. Practically nobody is discussed in the entire book outside of royal courts, military generals, or rarely, philosophers such as The Buddha, Confucius, or Plato.
Having said all this, the book was enjoyable enough for its entertainment value, and the narration was well done. Though the narrator came across dry and patrician, he did a professional job and was a good match for the tone of the book.

Ancient history from a multi-cultural perspective

I truly enjoyed seeing the similarities and at times, interactions, between the ancient cultures so often studied separately as if they were in a vacuum. Middle eastern, far eastern and European history come together nicely in this volume. Human motivations are,apparently, not culturally dependent. The author's enjoyment of her subject is captured in the narration.