The modern and recent historical literature on antiquity is vast in size. There are at least three thousand volumes in English worth reading on the ancient world. The weakness of this literature is that it is often too academic and technical to be accessible to the lay reader and beginning student.
Time and again authors fail to take pains to write in readable style. Since 1960 there has been a marked tendency to avoid highly interpretive works, and to write with focus on detailed information. Few people have the time and educational background to plow through these densely learned volumes.
Part of the problem is that surveys of ancient history are no longer offered in many respectable American colleges, so the market for introductory works and textbooks is very small.
Another problem arises from Britain where many writers on antiquity have been studying Greek and Latin since they were five years old, and presuppose fluency in the classical languages. A famous case is that of a British historian of the Roman Empire, now holding a chair at Yale, who published a thick study of a fourth-century-A.D. Roman historian but did not translate the Latin quotations.
The following books offer many hours of pleasure and high education. These recommendations focus on recent publications. Readability is noted.
There is a gap of 2.5 million years between the emergence of recognizable humans in East Africa and the appearance of literate civilizations in the Nile and Tigris-Euphrates valleys around 3500 B.C. What is known from archaeological data about this period of so-called prehistory is summarized in Colin Tudge, The Time Before History (New York: Scribner, 1996), Donald Johnson and Blake Edgar, From Lucy to Language (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), and Virginia Morrell, Ancestral Passions (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995), a fascinating biography of the famous Leakey family of paleontologists.
An authoritative, if difficult, summary of the history of the Ancient Near East before 300 B.C. is Amelie Kuhrt, The Ancient Near East, 2 vols. (New York: Routledge, 1995). More concise summaries are H. W. F. Saggs, Civilization Before Greece and Rome (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1989), and Charles K. Maisels, The Near East (New York: Routledge, 1993). Kuhrt will be the standard reference work for many years to come; Maisels is easy reading and is also well-informed. A dry but authoritative account of the material foundations of ancient Iraq is D. T. Potts, Mesopotamian Civilization (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1997); J. N. Postgate, Early Mesopotamia (New York: Routledge, 1996) is more lively. Of the vast literature on ancient Egypt, three recent books stand out: Barry J. Kemp, Ancient Egypt (New York: Routledge, 1989), Nicholas Grimal, A History of Ancient Egypt (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 1988), and Ian Shaw, ed., Oxford History of Ancient Egypt (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). Kemp’s work is easy reading. Jean Vercoutter, The Search for Ancient Egypt (New York: Abrams, 1993) is a well-illustrated and concise history of Egyptian archaeology.
From 1967 to 1980, the Israelis ruled the Sinai Peninsula. During this period their archaeologists sought proof of the liberation myth in the Book of Exodus. The result of the Sinai search and many excavations in Israel is summed up in Israel Finkelstein and Neil Silberman, The Bible Unearthed (New York: Free Press, 2001)—“There was no Exodus.” Also important and readable are Richard E. Friedman, Who Wrote the Bible? (New York: Summit, 1987), and Robin Lane Fox, The Unauthorized Version (New York: Viking, 1991). For ancient post-biblical Judaism, there is the brilliant book by Shaye J. D. Cohen, From the Maccabees to the Mishna (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1987).
The authoritative and well-organized textbook by Claude Orrieux and Pauline Schmitt Panel, A History of Ancient Greece (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 1999) is the starting point for all further reading on ancient Greece. For the Hellenistic era, Peter Green, From Alexander to Actium (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1993) is the authoritative survey, well-written. H. D. Kitto, The Greeks (New York: Penguin, 1985) remains the best book on Greek culture, but see also Anthony Andrews, The Greeks (New York: W. W. Norton, 1967), and Robert Garland, The Greek Way of Life (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1990) for insightful surveys. The archaeological quest for ancient Greece is well told in Roland and Françoise Etienne, The Search for Ancient Greece (New York: Abrams, 1990), beautifully illustrated. Richard Jenkyns, The Victorian and Ancient Greece (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1980) is a fascinating account of nineteenth-century English devotion to Athens. The biography of Alexander the Great by Robin Lane Fox, Alexander the Great (New York: Penguin, 1986), is both deeply learned and well-written, a masterpiece. The underside of Greek life is sharply depicted in Eva C. Keuls, The Reign of the Phallus (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1993).
The authoritative textbook, but not always easy reading, is Marcel Le Glay, Jean-Louis Voison, and Yann Le Bohec, A History of Rome (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 1996). It is particularly good about incorporating recent archaeological discoveries. Very different is Michael Grant, A History of Rome (New York: History Book Club, 1997), a well-written, highly personal account based on close reading of the literary sources. Colin Wells, The Roman Empire, 2nd ed. (London: Fontana, 1992), and Averil Cameron, The Late Roman Empire (London: Fontana, 1986) are sober and reliable surveys. Michael Rostovtzeff, Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire, 2nd ed. (Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1957) has not been superseded and remains the single best book ever written about antiquity. Nor has Tenney Frank, An Economic Survey of Ancient Rome, 6 vols. (New York: Octagon, 1975) been superseded. Fergus Miller, The Roman Empire and Its Neighbors, 2nd ed. (London: Duckworth, 1981) is an entry to advanced study but difficult reading. Fergus Miller, The Emperor in the Roman World (London: Duckworth, 1977) is important but prolix. C. N. Cochrane, Christianity and Classical Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1957) is an interesting indictment of Roman civilization from a Christian point of view. J. A. Crook, Law and Life of Rome (London: Thames and Hudson, 1967) remains the best introduction to the civil law. Claude Moratti, In Search of Ancient Rome (New York: Abrams, 1992) is a splendidly illustrated and insightful history of Roman archaeology.
The literature is vast but seven books stand out as informed, incisive, and very well written: Paula Frederikson, From Jesus to Christ (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University, 1988), Henry Chadwick, The Early Church (New York: Penguin, 1993), Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (New York: Knopf, 1987), Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo, 2nd ed. (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 2000), A. H. M. Jones, Constantine and the Conversion of Europe (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978), Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Random House, 1979), and Judith Herron, The Formation of Christendom (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1987). Chadwick has an infectious sense of humor and Pagels is a proponent of feminism. Lane Fox’s book is another enjoyable masterpiece.
R. R. Bolgar, The Classical Heritage and Its Beneficiaries (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1963) is still very much worth reading as a pragmatic and relativist view of the classical legacy. In Charles Freeman’s Egypt, Greece, and Rome (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), the part on Greece is well done. Barry Cunliffe, ed., The Oxford Illustrated History of Europe (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), presents the archaeological point of view, lavishly illustrated and diagrammed. It replaces the 1948 classic by V. Gordon Childe, What Happened in History? (New York: Penguin, 1952). Brian M. Fagan, The Seventy Great Mysteries of the Ancient World (New York: Thames and Hudson, 2001) is not always factually reliable but provides good bedtime reading. The feminist perspective is discussed in Riane Eisler, The Chalice and the Blade (New York: HarperCollins, 1988), and Marija Gimbutas, The Language of the Goddess (New York: HarperCollins, 1991).