Persians: The Age of Great Kings by Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones

 

Persians: The Age of Great Kings by Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones

-448 pages

The author is an academic from the U.K., but has written a general history of the Persian Achaemenid empire and its legacy. As with any conquering empire, there are battles, massacres, as well as murderous infighting among the royal family. The book's highlights are its focus on the empire's founder, Cyrus, and the artistic and legal achievements left by a dynasty that was still flourishing when Alexander the Great shockingly toppled it.

Worlds at War: The 2,500-Year struggle between East and West

Worlds at War: The 2,500-Year Struggle Between East and West

By Anthony Pagden

625 pages

The author begins in antiquity, with the conflict between Greece and the Persian Empire, and basically ended the publication with the conflict between America and Saddam Hussein.  The author expressed his thoughts that the conflict was not cultural but strictly religious.  According to Pagden, both the West (Christianity) and the East (Islam) contributed to the conflict.