The truly new ground explored in The Open Sea lies at the intersection of environmental and economic history. . . . Manning provides a thoughtful overview of the challenges and prospects we face in integrating the paleoclimate into the study of ancient economies. . . . An expert and bracing survey.
-Kyle Harper, EH.net The author's scholarly heft will ... Read moreimpress and persuade his audience as to the validity and significance of his insights and contributions; 125 pages of endnotes and bibliography buttress his case.
-A.R. Sanderson, Choice For too long, specialists have drawn lines through the ancient Mediterranean, with Egypt and the Near East on one side and Greece and Rome on the other. True to its title, The Open Sea washes these lines away, reuniting what should never have been separated. Manning provides a unified view of the economies of the first millennium BC, and everyone interested in the period will want to read this book.
Ian Morris, author of Why the West Rules
for Now Ranging over the entire Mediterranean from the Iron Age to the dawn of the Roman Empire, Manning draws on new evidence to rethink ancient history as a whole. Along the way, he makes clear what drove economic and institutional development in the ancient world: not huge empires but cross-cultural exchange and a very different sort of politics.
Philip T. Hoffman, author of Why Did Europe Conquer the World? Show Less