Assyria: The Rise and Fall of the World's First Empire by Eckart FrahmMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
An informative and approachable overview of the history of Assyria. The author takes you through the origins of Assyrian empire, its wars and conquests, and its people. There is information about the religion and statecraft, it's relationships with its neighbors. After discussing the downfall and disappearance of the empire as empire, the last part of the book discusses the legacy of Assyria up through present day. The intersection of the Assyrian history and biblical history is intriguing. The discussion of ISIS and its despicable destruction of ancient sites was disturbing.
This is a good book to look into if you are interested in getting the big picture. There are details, for sure, but that's not really the point here (and I have no way to evaluate the accuracy of those details -- the only minor error I was able to notice was the occasional anachronistic usage of names of geographic areas; that is, using a place name from a much later time to refer to the place in the past without the qualification of, for example, 'now know as' or some such thing). The point is more to get a sense of the uniqueness of the Assyrian empire and how it influenced later empires in the region. In that regard, the book is quite successful.
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