This book, by the author of 1421 (which posits that the Chinese discovered America ahead of Columbus), is about an ancient shipbuilding and trading culture on Crete about 1500 BCE. It’s part history and part travelogue. And that’s both its strength and its weakness. The conversational tone makes for easy listening. A dry litany of facts and theories could put listeners to sleep, so the author spices it up with observations about the contemporary landscape and culture. Yet he sometimes dawdles over those passages, clearly slowing the pace of the work. Gildart Jackson does an able job as narrator, giving the personal sections just the right touches of lightness but not making the history sound too ponderous. References are made regularly to illustrations in “the enhanced form” of the audiobook, which are helpful and enlightening but of little help to someone listening on an audio-only device.
Pub Date: 2011
Duration: 12 hrs
DD ISBN: 9780062097446
Publisher: Harper Audio
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
GENERAL HISTORY | ANCIENT | WORLD | HISTORY
Narrator Julian Elfer has undertaken many daunting subjects: the pharmacist of Auschwitz, the Borgias, lost expeditions to the Greenland ice cap. Here, he faces down the challenge of a 300-year generational narrative in which all the principals are named either Ptolemy or Cleopatra. At the early death of Alexander, Ptolemy, his shrewdest commander, took the grandest prize: Egypt. Ptolemaic rule ended dramatically three centuries later with the suicide of Cleopatra VII in 30 BCE. Those familiar events are compressed here; the focus instead is on the skill and sagacity of Ptolemaic rule over Egypt--for example in honoring Egyptian gods and rituals, and introducing Macedonian agricultural methods to Egyptian farming. This superbly written and expertly performed narrative illuminates one of history's anomalies--and one of its high points.
Pub Date: 2025
Duration: 11 hrs
DD ISBN: 9781696619202
Publisher: HighBridge Audio
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
Author/narrator William Dalrymple shares his fascination with the remarkable history of India's profound worldwide intellectual influence. His idiosyncratic and charming British speech and manner, along with his amiability and intelligence, are engaging throughout. His pacing and phrasing are natural, unaffected, and dictated by the material. He varies longish pauses--which allow the listener to absorb the sometimes complex details--with shorter sentences expressing excitement. His emphasis and shading of words, and his occasional deeply felt reactions, mirror the sense of the text and, therefore, illuminate it. The clear, unpretentious narration that takes the listener through this wide-ranging story of the spread of Indian religion, art, philosophy, mathematics, and science makes for an educational pleasure.
Pub Date: 2025
Duration: 13 hrs, 45 mins
DD ISBN: 9781639734689
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
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