ANCIENT GREECE

A collection of information organized into four sections: ``The Greek World,'' ``Living in Ancient Greece,'' ``Arts and Sciences,'' and ``Foreign Affairs.'' An entry in the Nature Company Discovery Series, the book is a visual feast, full of images and beautifully designed, and some of the clearest illustrations found in any book in a very crowded field. The text, on the other hand, suffers from oversimplification (stating as bald fact that Homer was an eighth-century b.c. poet who retold The Iliad and The Odyssey, or that the Greeks rebuilt Athens in 447 b.c.), and assumes knowledge on the part of readers they're unlikely to have. Little is covered in this volume that is not available in dozens of better books for this age group. (glossary, index) (Nonfiction. 8-13)