Fascinating & concise illustrated history of Ancient Mesopotamia. ( )

From the Villages, to Cities, to Empires (Assyria, Lydia, Babylonia, Medes, Persia).
Few histories avoid the sheer stupifying plutons of irony which litter the landscape. For example, it was Persia under one of its greatest monarchs, Cyrus, who liberated the Jews from the Babylonian Captivity [204, 215]. Today, the Persians are led by a man indifferent to history, but devoted to an ideology at odds with the same Jews who adopted and saved so much Persian wisdom in their almost single-handed and unappreciated tradition of passing information between generations.

Contains a Glossary.