Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West

Holland, Tom

ISBN 10: 0385513119 / ISBN 13: 9780385513111

Published by New York/London : Doubleday, 2005

Original half cloth, gilt lettered spine, dust jacket, illustrated with some photographs in b/w, 8vo.; Dust jacket price clipped. Seller Inventory # 402364-UC25

Synopsis:

In 480 BC, Xerxes, the king of Persia, led an invasion of mainland Greece. Its success should have been a formality. For seventy years, victory—rapid, spectacular victory—had seemed the birthright of the Persian Empire. In the space of a single generation, they had swept across the Near East, shattering ancient kingdoms, storming famous cities, putting together an empire that stretched from India to the shores of the Aegean. As a result of those conquests, Xerxes ruled as the most powerful man on the planet. Yet somehow, astonishingly, against the largest expeditionary force ever assembled, the Greeks of the mainland managed to hold out. The Persians were turned back. Greece remained free. Had the Greeks been defeated at Salamis, not only would the West have lost its first struggle for independence and survival, but it is unlikely that there would ever have been such an entity as the West at all.

Tom Holland's brilliant new book describes the very first "clash of empires" between East and West. Once again, he has found extraordinary parallels between the ancient world and our own. There is no other popular history that takes in the entire sweep of the Persian Wars, and no other classical historian—academic or popular—combines scholarly rigor, a novelistic depth, and a worldly irony in quite the fashion that Tom Holland does.

About the Author:

TOM HOLLAND gained the top degree at Cambridge before earning his Ph.D. at Oxford. He is the author of Rubicon, a critically acclaimed history of the fall of the Roman Republic, and the novels The Bone Hunter, Slave of My Thirst, and Lord of the Dead.

Bibliographic Details

Title: Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the...
Publisher: New York/London : Doubleday
Publication Date: 2005
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included