Rating: 
Summary: Iraq and Roll
Review: Mesopotamia is an ancient civilization with a new history, uncovered almost from scratch in the huge excavations of the last century. Roux takes you through about four thousand years in four hundred pages with surprising breadth and verve. The author loves his subject and his enthusiasm is contagious. Even where I got lost in the long names of foreign kings and distant battles, the crisp writing kept me turning pages. A great resource on a fascinating subject.
Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Overview for Student and Lay-person
Review: No one was more surprised than Georges Roux himself when people worldwide began demanding reprints from his articles in the now-defunct "Iraq Petroleum" magazine. But he shouldn't have been - the literature surrounding ancient Mesopotamia tends either to scholastic obscurity (and textbook expense) or to such a broad scope that oversimplification is necessary just to keep the story within two covers.Not so Roux's wonderful overview. After his retirement from a leading British pharmaceutical company he found the necessary leisure, and access to Parisian university libraries, to compile this volume of history. The first edition was written in the 60's, the second in the 80's after some remarkable finds greatly expanded the continuity of the original, and the third, this volume, in the early 90's. In this, he states that the English version has actually leapfrogged the original version in his native French. The book traces the civilizations of ancient Mesopotamia from the Paleolithic period through Sumer and Akkad, the Assyrian empire, Babylon, the glory of the Old Testament period, and to the final takeover by the Hellenistic Greeks. This sweep of history comprising some six-plus millennia cannot, of course, be dealt with comprehensively within the bounds of a single volume; nevertheless, Roux has managed to spotlight the extant periods without losing the story's overall continuity, a considerable achievement. This is, in this reviewer's opinion, the best single-volume introduction to ancient Mesopotamian history on the market today.
Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Overview for Student and Lay-person
Review: No one was more surprised than Georges Roux himself when people worldwide began demanding reprints from his articles in the now-defunct "Iraq Petroleum" magazine. But he shouldn't have been - the literature surrounding ancient Mesopotamia tends either to scholastic obscurity (and textbook expense) or to such a broad scope that oversimplification is necessary just to keep the story within two covers. Not so Roux's wonderful overview. After his retirement from a leading British pharmaceutical company he found the necessary leisure, and access to Parisian university libraries, to compile this volume of history. The first edition was written in the 60's, the second in the 80's after some remarkable finds greatly expanded the continuity of the original, and the third, this volume, in the early 90's. In this, he states that the English version has actually leapfrogged the original version in his native French. The book traces the civilizations of ancient Mesopotamia from the Paleolithic period through Sumer and Akkad, the Assyrian empire, Babylon, the glory of the Old Testament period, and to the final takeover by the Hellenistic Greeks. This sweep of history comprising some six-plus millennia cannot, of course, be dealt with comprehensively within the bounds of a single volume; nevertheless, Roux has managed to spotlight the extant periods without losing the story's overall continuity, a considerable achievement. This is, in this reviewer's opinion, the best single-volume introduction to ancient Mesopotamian history on the market today.
Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Overview for Student and Lay-person
Review: No one was more surprised than Georges Roux himself when people worldwide began demanding reprints from his articles in the now-defunct "Iraq Petroleum" magazine. But he shouldn't have been - the literature surrounding ancient Mesopotamia tends either to scholastic obscurity (and textbook expense) or to such a broad scope that oversimplification is necessary just to keep the story within two covers. Not so Roux's wonderful overview. After his retirement from a leading British pharmaceutical company he found the necessary leisure, and access to Parisian university libraries, to compile this volume of history. The first edition was written in the 60's, the second in the 80's after some remarkable finds greatly expanded the continuity of the original, and the third, this volume, in the early 90's. In this, he states that the English version has actually leapfrogged the original version in his native French. The book traces the civilizations of ancient Mesopotamia from the Paleolithic period through Sumer and Akkad, the Assyrian empire, Babylon, the glory of the Old Testament period, and to the final takeover by the Hellenistic Greeks. This sweep of history comprising some six-plus millennia cannot, of course, be dealt with comprehensively within the bounds of a single volume; nevertheless, Roux has managed to spotlight the extant periods without losing the story's overall continuity, a considerable achievement. This is, in this reviewer's opinion, the best single-volume introduction to ancient Mesopotamian history on the market today.
Rating: 
Summary: A true gem
Review: Roux is the rarest of scholars and academes, he is one who can write. Ancient Iraq is extremely erudite and written clearly and lucidly. Reading it and getting involved in the text is not difficult. Ancient Iraq covers the full spectrum of Iraqi ancient history and prehistory, from the Paleolithic through the Neolithic, the Sumerian civilization, and on to the Assyrian and Persian empires. Despite the wide scope of this book, Roux manages to keep the narrative tightly contained and compact, avoiding digressions and wandering. Highly readable, this book deserves to be owned by anyone with an interest in the region. It is poorly illustrated, but this is a relatively minor flaw. This is a true classic of archaeological literature.
Rating: 
Summary: no pictures
Review: This book is one of the best that I have read about ancient Mesopotamia, but is so badly illustrated.
Rating:
Summary: It's a treat
Review: This is a delightful introduction the Chaldean, Assyro-Babylonian, Sumero-Akkadian and Mesopotamian civilization(s) from earliest times down to around 500 B.C. Over half a million of their written tablets have been found (yet the number of sites identified and not dug up is much bigger than the number dug up so far). The author writes nicely in English; the book is not a translation from French.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating subject; excellent treatment
Review: Though so much of the past is and will likely remain hazy or unknown, what we CAN know about it may challenge and even sweep away many of our rash assumptions (especially assumptions about certain kinds of progress). What an exotic, grand, fragile and terrifying world Roux shows us. Heartily recommended.
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