A review by iteechesinglish
Babylon: Mesopotamia and the Birth of Civilization by Paul Kriwaczek

informative medium-paced

2.0

Unfortunately not quite what I was hoping for. To be fair, there aren't a lot of books about Mesopotamia written for a general audience so I appreciate the effort, but part of the problem is there's a lot we just don't know. The author remedies this by frequently veering into speculation, but the book itself was heavy on his own musings and light historical insights about subject matter. He also makes many sweeping statements about certain things being "the first" and "the beginning" which I'm always suspicious of and sometimes simply aren't true. For example he touts Eridu as "the first true city" even though there were other similar settlements at the time and, well, define "true city." He also makes many distinctions between "civilization" and "barbarians" which problematic concepts in themselves.