Rating: 4 out of 5
It is not often that I come back to a book about which my main memories are not primarily positive. However, in this case, I did feel the need to read Eric Cline’s ‘1177 B.C.’ again after hearing the author on ‘Empire’. ‘Empire’ is a good podcast and the author really made his expertise shine on it, in a way that I did not feel the original title ‘1177 B.C.’ had done. Overall, those shows made me want to read this again, and now I’ve come away from it with a much more positive view! Let me tell you why…
I don’t know detail for detail the changes that the book has undergone from its first edition to the one I currently read, although it was good to see relatively recent references included in the title. I am sure that bringing in as up-to-date research information definitely increases the value of the book in a world where ever-changing and developing investigations unlight new evidence across the broad spectrum of places that were a part of this title. It did not feel in that way that I read the same book which I went through six years earlier: the updates and additions, possibly also deletions, turned it into a title which was in many cases new.
I will add here that my own understanding has also developed a lot in this time. I know more about history as a science, and could therefore appreciate the nuances that Mr Cline felt necessary to describe here. To be fair, I think these details make it more than a typical popular history as there is plenty of historiography that gets discussed from civilization to civilization and from period to period, but I can see why Mr Cline wants to describe these facets—it is, after all, the crux of his work—and from my own point of view, I like this sort of detail much more now too. That is not to say that I think this book will work as well for someone who is not interested in the minutiae of historiography.
I will also add that perhaps the medium of enjoyment makes a difference for me: the first time round, I listened to these stories while hiking around New York countryside; this time I read it in my home. I don’t think that historiographic nuance comes across very well in audio; often the names of researchers are similar and it’s good to go back and check who did what when. This sort of functionality is much more difficult to do in audio, so I also think that the change in medium did a lot to make me like this title more.
All of which doesn’t mean that I want to say that the book is perfect. It’s a huge stepping stone in filling a gap, but one can ask—and these questions should not so much be to the author but to the editor—whether Mr Cline’s is accessible enough. The same historiography which I’ve mentioned several times in this review would be quite enough to put some folks, who I think should enjoy this title, off it. And yet, perhaps that’s not the market it’s aimed for? As an introductory title on a degree-level study programme, I think it would do rather well, and perhaps that’s the author’s main intention as well. For me, my typical wish stands—let’s honour chronology and the various states, treat each player consistently from their beginning to end—although it’s also very clear to me that that was not the title Mr Cline set out to write. That I cannot fault him for.
