Readings in Ancient History, Fifth Edition

I very much like the way that different civilizations are represented as they developed simultaneously. This is a much more engaging approach to the study of history than the bland, textureless stuff being offered by many standard text books. Oh, and I'm a woman.

I am only writing this as a response to the above review. I hope no one takes the gender remark seriously. The book is simply a collection of primary source readings from Ancient History (Greek and Roman readings comprising the bulk of this). How a book of primary sources can remain gender neutral is beyond me. The book is intended to serve as an introduction to the vast (and not so vast if you're actually doing research in ancient history) amounts of sources. Hence why it only has excerpts from the various readings. The idea is that if a person enjoys reading an excerpt from say Plutarch's Lives, then they will go out and buy it, rather than buying all the possible readings in ancient history individually. One subtle note about the book is that Bailkey's comments preceding each reading often relate them to readings from different eras. This can be very useful in an introductory history class.