I don't have enough to say about this book to justify an entire post for it, but it took me long enough to slog through it, that it's getting its own post.

In short, this book does what it says on the tin. It focuses on cuneiform tablets and monument inscriptions primarily, and archaeological evidence a very long-distance secondarily, to discuss multiple civilizations across multiple millennia, focusing mostly on non-royalty, although still with a lot of royalty involved.

It's very dry. It should be drier. I kept stumbling on moments where Podany tried to liven it up with speculated details about that person's life. I get that it can be hard to paint a picture of someone when all you have is a couple tablets, but the speculation sometimes raised my eyebrows at the assumptions she made.

I also kept randomly stumbling over Podany's prejudices about Me The Reader. She kept making certain assumptions about what I'd think of things, which I don't know if they reflect her own prejudices or comments she's received during her career from students or the general public. But it kept randomly being like "this is not X, like you'd expect" or "you have negative connotations for this term", and I'd blink a lot and say "?????"

She also... mostly remembers about survivorship bias? She even discusses it! But then she'll say things like "this kingdom kept no written records, they probably didn't need to, since they were small" and no!!!!!!! That archeologists have not yet found written records does not mean they never existed!!!!!! You know this! You even mention that various places probably did it on materials that aren't as durable as clay tablets! You mention that several of the clay tablets you discuss only survived to be archeological finds by happenstance! You focused all your research on clay tablets and privileged cuneiform, and that's fine, but that doesn't mean that places where clay tablets haven't been found means they didn't keep written records or write letters to each other!!!! You know this! You mention this! Stop randomly stating this anyway!

But I digress.

If you heard me mention I was reading a book about cuneiform tablets that deliberately chose not to discuss Ea-Nasir because he's internet famous, it's this one.

It is a good book! My overall rating is: Needs More Maps.

This book has a few maps (five?). It needs more. The fact that I don't even know how many maps there are is because they randomly show up as figures during chapters; there's no maps section. There's no map at the preface of every chapter. The maps aren't even necessarily very good as maps.

It needs more maps. It needs bigger ones, that have more focus areas. Stop assuming I know where every city or archeological site is, and give me more maps.

Thus ends the recommendation. It's a good book! But it took me Very Long to slog through it.