Neal Ascherson writes:

From a book as big and rich as this, the reader takes away not only a broad understanding but the sparkle of countless details. I won’t forget the image of the enormous gold fish, decorated with nomad-style hunting lions, which came out of a sixth-century BC Scythian grave in Germany, or of the horrible Neolithic massacre-pit at Talheim crammed with murdered peasants and their children, or the chieftain’s skeleton defiantly clutching his stone sceptre and flaunting his gold penis-sheath as he lies in his grave at Varna in Bulgaria. Unforgettable in another way is Cunliffe’s loving treatment of the island-city of Cádiz (Gadir), with its opulent Phoenician past and its pioneering Atlantic future, to which he returns again and again.

(LRB 23 October 2008)

Yale | hardback 518 pp. |ISBN: 9780300119237