A World History of Ancient Political Thought Review

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(More customer reviews)The synopsis of the book provided by the "Product Description" is fairly accurate. Therefore, I will only point out that (a) books on comparative history of ideas seem to be rather scarce; (b) many books entitled "History of ...whatever" only provide information about the West, the rest of the world being almost ignored, but Black's book is different, is truly global.
So when I found this book I decide it to give it a chance, in despite of not finding previous comments on it. I was surprised that no one else had made a comment before to this masterful work, which, in my opinion, is impartial and enlightening. Perhaps, because of the author's style, the book is no very engaging, but it is not dry either. In any event I think that the professional historian and the educated layperson alike can savour it. So I add my review, my rate being between 5 (content) and 3 (pleasure, sometimes falling to 2, sometimes raising to 4). I highly recommend it.
The book is short, less than 240 pages (plus bibliography), and is divided in the following way: Introduction / 1. Early Communities and States / 2. Egypt / 3. Mesopotamia, Assyria, Babilón / 4. Iran / 5. Israel / 6. India / 7. China / 8. The Greeks / 9. Rome / 10. Greco-Roman Humanism / 11. The Kingdom of heaven and the church of Christ / 12. Themes: similarities and differences between cultures / 13. Conclusion.

Other interesting books dealing with the history of ideas that I would recommend would be the following: 1) "The West and Islam: Religion and Political Thought in World History", another excellent book by the same author; 2) "America's Constitution: A Biography" by Akhil Reed Amar; 3) "Citizens to Lords: A Social History of Western Political Thought from Antiquity to the Middle Ages" by Ellen Meiksins Wood; 4) "God Owes Us Nothing: A Brief Remark on Pascal's Religion and on the Spirit of Jansenism" by Leszek Kolakowski; 5) "The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before its Triumph", by Albert O. Hirschman; and 6) "The Proper Study of Mankind: An Anthology of Essays" by Isaiah Berlin.
Additionally, for those looking for a broad framework to understand the past, I would also suggest reading the following works, whose scope is as amazingly global as Black's: 1. Agrarian cultures: "Pre-industrial societies" by Patricia Crone; 2. Economy: "The world economy. A millennial perspective" (2001) plus "The world economy: Historical Statistics" (2003) by Angus Maddison (a combined edition of these two volumes appeared on December 2007); 3. Government: "The History of Government" by S.E. Finer; 4. Ideas: "Ideas, a History from Fire to Freud", by Peter Watson; 5. Religion: "The Phenomenon of Religion: A Thematic Approach" by Moojan Momen; and 6. War: "War in Human Civilization" by Azar Gat.


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