𝑻𝒉𝒂𝒏𝒌 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝑵𝒆𝒕𝑮𝒂𝒍𝒍𝒆𝒚 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑷𝒖𝒃𝒍𝒊𝒔𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒄𝒐𝒑𝒚.

Have been interested in history/ historical books ever since and was lucky enough to get approval on this book. So far, I have enjoyed the book and it's quite hard to get into first because of the writing but it gets better when you get a gist of what's going on.

This book probably made me want to read more about this topic so definitely would go looking for another one that tackled this kind of events.

A highly academic read, Manousos E Kambouris pulls together numerous sources to recreate the interactions of Persia and Greece from an uncommon perspective.

Whilst I appreciate the effort and research that went into this book, I felt it was somewhat disjointed. The detailed descriptions of the battles were impressive but the introduction felt hollow, there wasn't a well-formed argument and a conclusion was all but missing.

It felt like the argument Kambouris was trying to make was an afterthought and the real focus was on discovering and relating as much minutiae as possible about specific military actions and engagements.

The depth of information included is impressive and I feel that by having such a soft argument layered over it really hindered the overall enjoyment and quality of the book.

Having said that, I would still recommend this book to military historians and dedicated fans of military history.

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for giving me a free digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed this book. It’s well researched and well written giving an unusual perspective on the historic relationship between Greece and Persia. Highly recommended.

This is the epic story of the Great Persian War of 481-479 BC, the major land and sea Persian invasion of Greece under Xerxes. Starting from the Persian decision to avenge the outrage caused to imperial prestige by the battle of Marathon, this book details the policy, diplomacy and religion as they intermingle with matters of strategy and tactics. It includes detailed coverage of the legendary Battle of Thermopylae, immortalized in literature and film as the ultimate defiant last stand. There is similarly in-depth coverage, in terms of events, tactics, methods and intentions, afforded to the relatively unknown sea battles off Cape Artemisium, only recently dramatized for the Big Screen; a naval engagement that primed the Battle of Salamis. Special attention has been paid to the events following these two battles, leading to the bloody conquest of Athens and the implementation of vengeance by the Persian Empire, which for a brief time stood triumphant, victorious and awesome as never before, but also sowed the seeds of eventual defeat. I was swept away by this informative read!

This is an extensive reevaluation of the military actions of the 2nd Persian-Greek war with an emphasis on stripping prior works of their prejudices and including more Persian data that perhaps were unavailable to earlier western scholars. Kambouris analyzes everything down to the actual ground the Imperial invaders traversed in an effort to correct Herodotus' guesswork, not to mention performing an extensive search of other sources where details about the battles were mentioned in passing. I really appreciated the attempt at objectivity, but the introduction is thoroughly unhelpful and the absence of a conclusion left me at a loss as to whether Kambouris had even proved his arguments. So, in sum, a fascinating collation of information but could use a better framework.