silea's review against another edition
funny
informative
medium-paced
4.5
The audio version is an absolute delight. Finkel is a great storyteller.
woodsy23's review against another edition
3.0
Bit dry in places but the underlying message was very interesting Nd he definitely knows his stuff :)
fqzgh's review
3.0
Strange mix of a book. I really liked the ancient near-East history. I was interested in the cuneiform, and the description of what it's like to spend your life decoding ancient tablets. I was not at all interested in how much bitumen is needed to waterproof a coracle.
me_haugen's review against another edition
5.0
Ended up reading this whole thing in one go when I once again got confused and mixed up the train station and the train museum and spent several hours sitting inside an interactive exhibit. Going forward, please DON'T let people sit in trains that seem like they go somewhere but do not. I ended up missing a meeting so my wife had to give our business pitch to the investors with the guy who made our dioramas for us and they ended up falling in love and now my precarious marriage is over and that is on you, Train Museum. This book was good.
starstuff's review against another edition
adventurous
informative
lighthearted
mysterious
slow-paced
2.5
godhelm's review against another edition
4.0
Finkel is a fascinating character and a very engaging reader; usually the author reading their own work is a terrible decision, here I could imagine no one else. The book gives you a state of the cuneiform writing system, an overview of the civilizations that used it, before getting into the meat of the title and describing the many tablets and versions of the flood myth that predate the Bible. The real surprise is seeing how detailed an account it is, given the staccato and formulaic languages used. Finkel describes instructions so literal and detailed (given the era) it's hard not to come away thinking there's a real event somewhere along the route of this story.
dbaker's review against another edition
1.0
His infectious love for cuneiform was very interesting in the first couple of chapters. But once he moves on from there, he gets totally lost in the weeds.
thombeckett's review against another edition
5.0
Sad that so many reviews seem to think this book is dry, when I found the underlying of the discovery of the earliest known versions of the story we know as Noah's Ark anything but. Indeed I found everything from the author's history as an academic at the British Museum to his excitement at these ancient discoveries consistently fascinating, and felt the author turned what could have been a very dry subject into a very human story. Great stuff.