Babylon

Mesopotamia and the Birth of Civilization

By: Paul Kriwaczek

Narrated by: Derek Perkins

Civilization was born 8,000 years ago, between the floodplains of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, when migrants from the surrounding mountains and deserts began to create increasingly sophisticated urban societies. In the cities that they built, half of human history took place.

In Babylon, Paul Kriwaczek tells the story of Mesopotamia from the earliest settlements seven thousand years ago to the eclipse of Babylon in the sixth century BCE. Bringing the people of this land to life in vibrant detail, the author chronicles the rise and fall of power during this period and explores the political and social systems, as well as the technical and cultural innovations, which made this land extraordinary. At the heart of this book is the story of Babylon, which rose to prominence under the Amorite king Hammurabi from about 1800 BCE. Even as Babylon's fortunes waxed and waned, it never lost its allure as the ancient world's greatest city.

Engaging and compelling, Babylon reveals the splendor of the ancient world that laid the foundation for civilization itself.

©2010 Paul Kriwaczek (P)2019 Tantor

Mesopotamia - the birthplace of cities

Listening to this book has been a real eye-opener for me. I have always had the perception that Egypt was where civilization as we know it originated and that the Greeks took what they had gathered from the Egyptians and expanded on that to form what we know of today as our democratic societies. I was aware that somewhere around the same time as the Egyptian kingdoms were flourishing that there were societies in the area of Mesopotamia, but never really had more than a fuzzy picture of what those societies actually were. This book goes into detail of how much of what we have credited the Greeks and Egyptians with were actually from Mesopotamia. For example, Pythagoras' formula for finding the length of the third side of a triangle was known in Mesopotamia a thousand years before Pythagoras lived.

I found this book to be well researched and written so as make it easy to follow the course of events as they happened in the various areas of Mesopotamia. The author did this in a way that included important personalities but did not focus solely on that; instead, including what life was like for the typical person, how the society functioned economically and administratively, how various migrations effected the make up and direction of a particular culture, and how for 2500 years Mesopotamia was a major center of the world for the birthing processes of human civilization. This book was a pleasure to listen to. The reader did a great job with a very clear and pleasant voice. I was successfully introduced to a world that I barely knew existed, and I'm very grateful to both the author and the reader for that.

Fascinating

An amazing amount of scholarship went into this book and all of it perfectly narrated by Derek Perkins.

A great history listen.

Although fairly well-versed in modern history, I knew very little of really ancient history. This book serves as a good introduction and the reader makes it even better. I especially like how the author weaves in current events and archeological findings.

Did not know how advanced the mesopotamian sicieties were

Great listening on ancient mesopotamia. Amazing heritage of our modern civilization in perfect amount of detail.

A very good performance of the narrator

That was a good performance of the narrator. great, but missed a bit more details that I would like to learn

very enjoyable, very accessible,

a lot of material that I didn't know about and might not have accessed otherwise

Very enjoyable

I especially enjoyed the discussions of languages development and cuneiform. This hit exactly the right notes of being engaging but not dramatic and very informative but not droning or boring.

Excellent

This is a very good history of ancient Mesopotamia from the most ancient times to Babylon.

Wonderful and relevant history of Mesopotamia

I have studied ancient Near East culture and literature as part of my doctoral and professorial work for forty-five years. This book connected the many dkts I have acquired into a sensible picture of the whole. I enjoyed Kriwaczek's insightful connections with other periods of history. This illumined Mesopotamia with more accessible analogies from history, and offered thought provoking insigbts into modern history.

Babylon

Very well written and researched. There was perhaps a little bit of jumping around geographically and chronologically that required concentration to follow, but otherwise it was very clear. I liked how he interwove the effects and patterns of history with both modern history and judeo-christian events. I don't think we can understand judeo-christianity without understanding its roots, and those roots for the most part are Mesopotamian.

A nit-pick with the title, this book wasn't really about Babylon per se, but about ancient Mesopotamia, its geology, history, cities and societies.

The narration was quite good, although there were a few mispronunciations that stood out, the most obvious being 'KYU-ni-form' for 'kyu-NAY-i-form'.