Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West, (Paperback)

from whjensen

Recently read this after finishing Herodotus' Histories. Read in conjunction with Herodotus, I feel this is a solid 4 star book, adding flavor as well as a historical check to some of Herodotus' eccentricities. However, I feel that some times, Holland goes astray and people who have not had the p...

from SChant

Excellent. Really enjoyable history of the early Persian Empire and it's conflicts with the various city-states of Greece around 500BC. I'm not usually a fan of MilHist but the accounts of the battles of Marathon, Thermopylae and Salamis were as exciting as any thriller!

from pierthinker

A fan of history, but never really into the ancient world, this was my first serious book about the Persian and Greek empires of the 5th century BC. Tom Holland writes with passion, authority and immediacy. This reads more like reportage than history. He clearly states the chronological narrative...

from santhony

I picked up this novel after reading Holland's Rubicon, due partly to my preference for the author's narrative style of presenting history, and partly due to the intriguing subject matter. Much has been written of the Greco-Persian War, but almost exclusively from the Greek perspective. While thi...

from DrRex

A fictionalized but accurate account of the Persian attack on Greece and the battle between the forces of Xerexes and the Greeks, including the Spartans.