I had to buy this book as the textbook for my History of the Ancient Near East class, and it ended up being fairly good. Textbook reading is never the most exciting, but it was decently well-written and easy to understand. The timelines at the beginning of each chapter definitely helped. It's not exactly and exciting topic, but for what it is I think that this was a helpful book.

The author here manages to write a chronological account from the dawn of civilization in Mesopotamia to the coming of Alexander the Great without getting boring. While it is pretty detailed, it could use a bit more fleshing out in my opinion. In terms of history and political developments, the author obviously knows what he's talking about, although I do think his statement about the spread of Indo-European languages from the Eurasian steppes being an "outdated nineteenth century concept" is a bit ignorant as to the state of that field. Other than that, the book is well-written and makes ample use of primary sources.

This is a very good introduction to mesopotamian studies. I was impressed by the very good quality of the information given and the effectiveness of short and well-articulated chapters. The book does not assume that the reader is familiar with ancient history and explains step by step the history as well as the culture and social development of the ancient near east. I did not give five stars to this very good book because I thought it did not dwell enough on the linguistic aspects of the matter. Otherwise all is very well explained, without needless lengthy digressions. Pictures are kind of limited, but still enough to follow the descriptions. The inserts are particularly interesting featuring mainly translations of ancient text, as for example passages taken from the Amarna letters. The list of kings at the end of the book is particularly interesting. I recommend this book to all who are interested in having a basic knowledge of ancient near east history and even to those who are already introduced to the subject, because this can be considered a good quick-reference book.

Marc Van De Mieroop, Professor in the Departments of History and Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University, New York guides you through a substantial era in the ancient Near East, 3000 to ca. 323 B.C. Van De Mieroop speaks in a grandfatherly tone--authoritative, familiar, stern--and yet with a twinkle in his eye and the precision of a surgeon's scalpel which keeps you leaning forward on the edge of your seat.

Granted, the book reads as a college textbook, and indeed is the compilation of xeroxed notes used for an introductory undergraduate class on the ancient history of Mesopotamia and Asia Minor. Nonetheless, Van De Mieroop is a spectacular lecturer. He presents the reader with textual and archaelogical data, and how these contribute to our understanding of the history, but he does NOT bore the reader to death with an analyis of every single shard found at every obscure excavation site. Still, Van De Mieroop doesn't rush things--he is an authoritative expert in his field and, even if this is only an introductory textbook, he still offers the readers dazzling pearls of information.

This book's main strengths are two-fold: 1)It reads not like a history book; that is, a book of King A who was replaced by King B who was assassinated by King X, etc--but, like a novel. The suspense builds, and you have to keep yourself in check and not flip over to Chapter 13: Assyria's World Domination until you get to that part and 2)Van De Mieroop emphasizes the "big picture" before looking at the details. To Van De Mieroop, the drama in the Near East involved many actors with many different parts to play, and you can be assured that he will describe what those parts were to the best of his ability.

In summary, this is an indispensable book for the ancient Near East aficionado which I whole-heartedly recommend. With it one will gain a sturdy conceptual framework of the ancient Near Eastern period which will buttress further study if one so desires.