Amazon.com's Best of 2001
Fernand Braudel's Memory and the Mediterraneanis a panoramic and singular history, a comprehensive synthesis, of that region from pre-historic times to the beginning of the Byzantine Empire. Braudel's concerns are not the usual turning points such as battles and political upheaval. Instead, he focuses on regional and sub-regional vicissitudes (climate, topography, geologic cataclysms, the very currents of the sea itself) and their legacies, especially commerce, to trace the reasons behind the risings and falls of the greater Mediterranean's scores of ancient cultures. What, for example, were the ramifications of Egypt's lack of forests? How did the discovery of bitumen and the development of concrete affect, respectively, the Phoenicians and the Romans? Memory and the Mediterraneanis complex and demanding but in the end, rewarding. Its point of view is at once Olympian, humble, and richly commonsensical. --H. O'Billovitch
From Library Journal
Not enough can be said about this most recently published work from Braudel (A History of Civilizations), a general history of the Mediterranean region from its geologic beginnings to Rome's takeover of the entire area. Braudel, who dominated France's Annales School following World War II and died in 1985, wrote this work in the late 1960s for a series that was never published. Subsequently, current scholars have used footnotes to correct the factual errors that resulted mostly from incomplete archaeological evidence regarding the earliest human history, leaving the author's text otherwise intact. The modern reader will appreciate this work's brevity compared with the author's previous works. Since the history of Phoenicia and its colonies is so closely tied to the geography of the Mediterranean, Braudel's emphasis on geography is particularly salient here. His approach to the Mediterranean will fascinate modern students of ancient history who have doubtless envied the 15th and 16th centuries for receiving so much attention from historians. Recommended for all academic and large public libraries. Clay Williams, Hunter Coll., New York
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
