Customer Reviews

Impressive but imposing - By: Ebzy, 06 Jul 2008
Having watched the movie 300 I was intrigued by the famous last stand of king Leonidas. I started tearing through the pages of Wikipedia to find out as much as I could about the event & found out that it was one of the few conflicts that likely changed the world. I wanted to read more on the battle & the other similar conflicts. Hardly a few days ago, while passing through the local high street I saw this book & quickly bought it.

I read through this book & found it held a flood of factual & impressive research based opinions. It is commendable & monumentalin that regard (although as expected not quite as big-screen adapted as 300).

The author at the begining shows his opinion of being anti-warin general, & expresses his disdain for violence & loss of life. However, even with this he still manages to praise the prowess & military genius of the leaders. This would make for a good, balanced read.

However, my main criticism of this book is that the author does not do this consistantly & indiscriminately, & it becomes only too obvious when reading his sharper criticisms of religions (yes Islam typically & tediously is the main target of his wrath). This would be fair enough - or should I say bearable, but it becomes transparent when historical inaccuracies & offensive descriptions are happily repeated. Its what should be expected from tabloids not from a book which should have been based on research instead of ideology, (which is ironic asin his introduction he appears to despise imposing ideologies).

I commend the detail & facts presented here, but that can be foundin other similarly named books (e.g. 50 conflicts that changed the world, & yes even Wikipedia) which this book arguably matches. It severly is hampered by the stereotypes it repeats.

If only the author could keep seperate his ideological bias from the facts, the book may have proved to be invaluable.