A great introduction to the history of classics, not the way we think about it, but focusing on academia. Why do we focus on certain periods and cultural segments and not on others, where does it come from and how is it (obviously) related to racism and classism. It was also a very interesting critique on mastery and whether it is truly needed to be a well rounded historian, but also a reminder that.

While it was a specialized book, as someone not in the industry I could still understand what was going on and that is thanks to the prose, just the right amount of jargon and specialized terms, and a great narrator. There were some points were having the audiobook was a bit of a detractor though, as I could not pause and reread enumerations. Had I read it instead of listened to it, I could have gone back to those enumerations and recontextualize what I was listening at the moment as their concepts were expanded and reduced the amount of times I felt kind of lost. Even with that, the book is written in such an accessible way that I still came out with a basic level of understanding of foundational history and its importance to the culture.

Essential reading for those considering to go into academia, specially from he humanities, and a good read for those tangentially interested through a love of history at large.

3.5 stars rounded up to 4. I agree with the argument that Walter Scheidel made in “What Is Ancient History”, and I found much of it to be enlightening, interesting, and useful. Scheidel’s main argument is that ancient history should include the history of people all over the world rather than focus only on the Greeks and Romans. He argued that one way to accomplish this would be to compare and contrast how different people groups dealt with similar issues.

I personally found the beginning section of the book somewhat frustrating, but the rest was quite good. The first section examined different possible definitions of ancient history, and ultimately rejected them all, but without providing a better alternative.

The next section was both fascinating and depressing. It described the development of ancient history education in universities in Europe and America. Scheidel showed the insidious way that people in the 1700s decided that Greek and Roman languages and history were the best in the world, and excluded everything else. That idea took hold in universities, and still influences history education today.

The final section suggested some potential ways to improve history education in universities. I wish this section was longer, and had given more possible solutions, but it was still useful.

Overall, I’m glad I read “What Is Ancient History”, and I think it is making important arguments.

Thanks to HighBridge Audio through NetGalley who allowed me to listen to the audio version of this book. The narrator, Michael Langan, did an excellent job!

I requested the audiobook because the title intrigued me. It posed a question I’ve never considered. I’m not an academic nor am I a huge history buff, but I am curious and enjoy learning new and different things. This is incredibly detailed but equally rewarding. Right from the outset, I found myself pausing play to consider what had just been narrated. The emphasis is on the fact that Ancient History is very much focussed on the Mediterranean area of Greece, Rome. It’s European and totally ignores other cultures who, to my mind, are equally important. This is a view which has prevailed and influenced for centuries and is self perpetuating as it’s the focus of university teaching the world over.
The book requires concentration, but I’m so pleased I chose it. It’s very well written and the arguments are persuasive, I’ve approached it in small chunks as the content requires consideration and reflection, but I’ve enjoyed every minute of this groundbreaking approach. My thanks to the publ and Netgalley for a review copy. The narration throughout is excellent and very easy to listen to.

A huge thing that irks me? The fact that the world really only focuses on certain cultures of ancient history but talks about it like it's all encompassing. So this book was so much right up my alley, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading this and would highly recommend it to any one who is interested in history.

Unfortunately, this one wasn’t for me. I went in expecting a general introduction to ancient history, but this book is clearly written for those already immersed in academic fields like classics, anthropology, or history.

What I did appreciate:

The writing is good and thoroughly researched. Scheidel's main argument—that Western academia often centers Greek and Roman civilizations while neglecting other ancient cultures—is thought-provoking and important.
However, as someone not deeply familiar with the subject matter, I found the book dense and difficult to follow. I was hoping to learn something new, but instead felt a bit lost.

Final thoughts:

This isn’t a beginner-friendly read, but if you’re a history geek or studying in a related field, you might find it valuable and insightful.

Thank you to NetGalley and HighBridge Audio for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was a really good audiobook which made for easy listening.

I really liked the idea of how nuanced history can be and how it can be molded to fit certain agendas (well I didn't LIKE that part, but I agree with it). This would make a really good intro to history type of book to assign college/university students. I enjoyed that it looked at non-western examples and how biased history and classic departments are for only focusing on "western" history as the most relevent.

I thought the case studies featured were interesting and overall a decent read.

Walter Scheidel’s What is Ancient History is a thought-provoking exploration of the field, written primarily for professors and academics specializing in classical and ancient history rather than the casual reader. The book begins with a fascinating global perspective on ancient history before delving into the evolution of German academia, where the seminar university format was developed through a reverence for Greek and Roman ideals. This trajectory eventually gave birth to the Classics department as we know it.

Reading Scheidel’s work brought me back to my own university days, where courses in Western History and introductory Classics dominated my first-year experience. Even when I began teaching high school history in Ontario in the early 2000s, the curriculum remained firmly rooted in this Western-centric approach. That said, I found Scheidel’s arguments valuable in supporting my efforts to decolonize and broaden the lens of both ancient and modern history courses, which I began doing around 2005. His writing is clear, his argument sound, and his reflections on the future of academic history departments resonate deeply. As these institutions face the challenge of adaptation to meet the demands of a changing perspective, it will be interesting to see whether they can reinvent themselves before becoming obsolete.

While What is Ancient History may not appeal to the average reader, it is a worthwhile resource for educators and scholars invested in the ongoing evolution of historical study.

This book invites us to consider what is Ancient History, what should and should not be included. Is it just Greek and R9man history or should other areas be included?

This is a well written, well structured and well narrated book (I listened to the audiobook). I found this book very informative and explains the many influences and history of why what is taught and studied in the academic world.

I always give non fiction books 5 stars and will continue to do that here.
This was a confusing read for me and I am not sure how to leave a review. I love a good non fiction read and love learning new things, but I am not sure what I learned here. I'm not even sure what this book was about, I couldn't for the life of me stay focused on it and my mind was wandering everywhere else.

DNF at 41%. I really liked the introduction and the message this book is trying to convey, but it was just too dense and layered for an audiobook. If I read this as an eye-ball-book where I could go over sentences or passages that confused me the first time it might have been different, but it was nearly impossible to follow in this format.

Scheidel makes an excellent point but in a rather ponderous fashion: "ancient history" in the Western framework is a narrow and rather Western-centric idea that excludes or at least demarcates other "ancient histories" for no good reason. Scheidel criticizes, and rightly so, the bedrock Greco-Roman "classics" that make up what Western thinkers decided ancient history should be all about. What kind of ancient history might we learn about without these phantom shackles? I was hoping for more of that and less of an argument utterly centred on the problem. Yet, it was a compelling account worthy of a read.

The narration by Michael Langan was fantastic and kept my attention.

An interesting read arguing for the expansion of studies of "Ancient History" to expand past well studied cultures like the Greeks and Romans and into less studied areas like non-Egypt Africa. In fact, I wish I had written down the cultures he touched on, I had never heard of some of them before.

This book argues for a global perspective on ancient history, emphasizing its lasting impact on modern life and advocating for a more inclusive approach beyond the traditional focus on Greece and Rome.

This book is largely academic in that it focuses a lot on definitions: What is ancient? What is medieval? How do we handle to discontinuities of different cultures developing technologies at different rates? If that sounds boring, IT IS. It wouldn’t be boring if it were way less detailed and redundant. The problem, I think, is that the author treats these questions as arguments rather than as the gentle unfolding of information. The tone of the book is, “I’m right and everything that’s come before me is wrong,” and the author then carefully cherry-picks strawman examples to knock down. In fact, academia has been taking a multicultural approach to ancient history for decades. This is not a new phenomenon.

I feel like this book is more about rhetoric than it is about humanity. The result is an unengaging word salad. I’ve listened to about 25% of the book, and my mind keeps wandering—to the point that none of it is getting through. (Compare that to “The Dawn of Everything” by David Graeber and David Wengrow, which I could not put down. I was recommending it to people even before I finished it.) The author of this book doesn’t use a storytelling style—instead, the book reads like an academic journal article. No one outside of academia wants to read journal articles. Fortunately, the narration is well done and increases the readability of the book.

There’s good information in this book, but there’s a lot of nonsense, too. When I spend more time rolling my eyes than I do nodding in agreement, that’s not a good sign. I’ve not given up on this book yet…but it’s not looking good.

Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC I received. This is my honest and voluntary review.

[2.5 stars rounded down]

<i> What is Ancient History </i> is Scheidel’s history of how Greece and Rome came to be the only civilizations that are included in discussions of and classes on “ancient history”, how universities have continuously divided and subdivided the humanities so far as to limit the study of ancient history, and his arguments as to what should be done about it. A concise, clearly written book that I had to struggle to remain interested in, which is strange because I enjoy all of the topics within it?

I think you would get a lot more out of this book if you are currently in or have been in the fields of classics, anthropology, ancient history, or any [location] studies/history courses, as the author discusses how these categories came to be over the last few centuries. The language is not at all overly-scholarly, his recounts of the history are thorough, his arguments are sound and easy to follow. It definitely seems like it would still be relevant and interesting whether you're just taking a few classes to fill your humanities credits or are deeper into the field.

I expected this book to be a look into what is missing from what the average person learns about ancient history in school as well as a showcasing of just how much that has limited the field. I agree that it is lazy and limiting to study ancient civilizations without acknowledging their neighbors beyond them. Once I got more into it to see what the book was more about, I was still hopeful that I would enjoy it.

I most enjoyed a lot of the second chapter and how he explains the reasons for Europe's/Germany’s obsession with finding a past to model on and choosing the Greeks rather than Egypt, the Biblical history, or anything else that they could have chosen. This specifically was designed to be a deep dive, down to mentioning specific papers and the journals they were published in by influential people in this development. There were some slow sections, but I enjoyed the information overall. It is a very interesting topic that I had no idea went back so far, and it is especially fun to compare some of the two-hundred-plus quotes he lists about Greece as the start of Western civilization to the same things I remember reading in my high school readings less than a decade ago.

For me, as someone who has never been in or ever had a deep-dive into any of these fields specifically, I really struggled to stay interested. There are only so many times I can hear his argument that “different institutions across Europe adopted the practice of separating Greece and Rome from other ancient cultures and putting them on a pedestal. This was a mistake.” before my eyes glazed over. It’s a shame, because I enjoy how Scheidel writes these accounts and appreciate the depth he goes into, but I felt like there was constant needless recounting of this, and other, arguments. As someone with little skin in the matter, it was like hearing about issues in a foreign country from a resident there. Like, yes I understand why what you are saying is good, is good, and why what you are saying is bad, is bad, but I lack any context to think beyond the surface of these arguments or build off of them. A me problem, yes 100%, but this is very different from what I was expecting going into the book and it hindered my enjoyment of it.

I don’t at all think that reading this book was a waste of time, despite my lack of enjoyment. I think that the arguments he makes are valid and that he leaves us on a good point. I also think that Scheidel is a great writer throughout this book and, to the right audience, this would be a favorite of theirs. But for me, the constant need to make his cases as well as the ceaseless repetition prevented any real enjoyment from me while reading.

What Is Ancient History takes how we usually look at history and delves deeper into the unknown areas. Places and events that are largely forgotten, overlooked, or purposefully written out of history are discussed here in detail. He argues for looking at the world beyond the ancient Greeks and Romans, to restore what has been lost over the decades. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in history. The audiobook narrator was interesting, voice was suited for the story, and kept me interested in the entire book.