In this slim volume, T. has undertaken to present a wide-ranging environmental history of the Mediterranean within the shifting and dynamic geographical boundaries and overlapping chronologies (ninth century b.c. – fourth/fifth centuries a.d.) of the Greek and Roman civilisations. ‘Environmental history’ is problematised as a thoroughly modern concept throughout the introduction. With his clarification of the term as ‘the past interaction between people and the rest of nature, that is, the environmental conditions which prevailed in the past, and their perception and interpretation by contemporaries’ (p. 10), the study emphasises the complex and multi-directional process that is environmental history.

In the introduction, T. provides a thoughtful, careful and extended contextualisation of the terms denoting actions and perceptions in antiquity, as understood through modern terminologies and perceptions, through the lens of environmental history. Throughout, T. is careful not to fall prey to environmental determinism; instead, his interest is in articulating the various factors and complex relationships between humans and their environment that are in flux over time. To accomplish these goals, the book is divided into two Parts, ‘Greece’ and ‘Rome’, in order to demonstrate the ‘similarities and differences between the two civilizations and their handling of nature’ (p. 15). In order to further that goal, the two Parts are structured in parallel, addressing topics in the same order: ‘The Geographic Space’, ‘People and Nature’, ‘Agriculture’, ‘Forests and Timber’, ‘Gardens’, ‘Animals’, ‘Food’, ‘Fire and Water’, ‘Earthquakes and Volcanoes’ and ‘Mining’. ‘Urban Problems and Rural Villa Construction’ and ‘The Environment in Roman Britain’ are additions to Part 2, with the latter a new addition to the English-language edition. The overall treatment of the two Parts is balanced, extending even to the page length of each. The inclusion of the chapter on villa construction contributes to the more general success of Part 2. There are expected focusses: the single episode of the Vesuvius eruption in a.d. 79, for instance, merits twice as many pages as some whole chapters. To some extent this betrays T.'s reliance on literary sources over other types of evidence. Other activities such as mining – which, ‘with its associated polluting activities, caused one of the most serious impacts on the landscape’ (p. 63) – often receive less than two pages.

T. breaks from the issue-by-issue structure with his concluding study on Roman Britain. This chapter is not just an addition to the earlier work: because its geographic and chronological focus is narrower, it is more of a case study for the application of the themes raised in the broader ‘Greece’ and ‘Rome’ divisions. In this sense, it is the most comprehensive of the chapters, and is therefore his most successful demonstration of the interdisciplinary potential of environmental history in a study of the ancient world.

A helpful guide to further reading is structured in the same order as the chapters and sub-sections, with page references to the bibliography for tracking down the full citation. Puzzlingly, some sections are given separate, dedicated sections in the bibliography, but not others: ‘The era of colonisation’ is outfitted with a generous bibliography, given the topic is only dwelt upon for a page and a quarter, but the sources cited in ‘The “polis” and the “chora”: the city and its countryside’ are subsumed within Chapter 1's ‘The geographic space’ for Part 1: Greece.

Although the book purports to be ‘highly accessible to students and non-specialists’, there are a few minor issues regarding its potential as an introductory textbook. The terms used throughout are at times rather vaguely defined – and surprisingly so, given the attention to the subtleties of terminology in the introduction's extensive discussion – regarding terms basic to scholars of the ancient world, yet not necessarily known by the lay reader. Cases in point are ‘Neolithic revolution’ (p. 12) and ‘Law of the Twelve Tables’ (p. 90), which are referred to in passing with no explicit definition or direction to further reading. This neglect of certain details is not a frequent or significant enough occurrence to detract from the volume's usefulness as an introductory textbook, but rather a by-product of its short length. T. explicitly admits that there are benefits and limitations to breadth versus depth (in that brevity, here, does not necessarily preclude detail). T. is conscious that detailed examples are necessary to avoid less-than-productive ‘broad-brush prejudices’ (p. 1), while at the same time attempting to be comprehensive within the limits of this slim volume. In a longer exposition, its usefulness as an introductory work would have been much improved by a more extensive explanation of the processes by which environmental evidence is deposited, collected, analysed, synthesised and interpreted. Without it, the primary sources outside the literature remain something of a mystery. There are, of course, exceptions: Chapter 14, ‘Forests and Timber’, does provide an explanation of how environmental historians use dendrochronological, palynological and geomorphological data to understand changing farming techniques and align them with what we know from the archaeological data (for example, hillside erosion and the abandonment of uillae rusticae, p. 87).

In a book that explicitly relies on literary sources even while ‘attempting’ to incorporate other types of evidence (p. 1), the discussion of terms like ‘sustainability’ or ‘environment’ in a modern context – and subsequently, their potential inapplicability to a discussion of the ancient world – is most welcome. T. cautions against misconstruing the ancient Greek and Roman world as full of idyllic Edens that have since been destroyed by greed and carelessness, or misreading ancient authors' intentions in their critiques of contemporaries' mistreatment of nature: ‘here it is not protection of nature, but rather fitting in sensibly with the existing world order, with the goal of moral fortification, that is the point’ (p. 78). This perspective can be gained only from a close examination of the literary evidence, and is one of the benefits of focussing mainly on this type of source material. Understandably, T. feels the need to address the relevance of his study to the state of the environment in today's world. This forms the foundation for his discussion of terminology in the introduction, where he focusses on contemporary conceptions of ‘nature’ and ‘environment’, discussing how modern attitudes toward the environment differ from the phenomena that the ancient Greeks and Romans understood to constitute nature (p. 3). However, while T. concludes that the ancients did affect their environment negatively, he notes that they rarely recognised the extent of most damage, and even when they did – Plato's recognition that the practice of clear-cutting results in soil erosion and habitat destruction, and upsets the water balance (p. 40) – they rarely felt compelled to do anything to rectify the situation. For T., it is simple: ‘The Greeks and Romans of course still lacked the technological wherewithal to inflict global damage upon the environment’ (p. 2), and so a study of the ancient environment can contribute only indirectly to the dialogue about environmental damage and modern responses and responsibilities towards that environment.