For the past 20 years, teachers of Greek art and archaeology have had a choice between two textbooks: William Biers' The Archaeology of Greece (the 1996 edition, with its largely black-and-white illustrations, now decidedly drab) and John Pedley's more colourful and up-to-date Greek Art and Archaeology (5th edition, 2012). N. now offers a third option, with this highly readable and beautifully illustrated text. N. is a prolific scholar known for his original and insightful analyses of Greek sculpture and vase painting. As a teacher he has clearly given thought to the presentation of this material to an undergraduate audience, and this text, with its fourteen chapters designed for an American college semester, translates into written form a finely honed introductory class.

N. organises his account chronologically, beginning with two meaty chapters on Minoan and Mycenaean Greece, then following the story to the Hellenistic period and, despite the title, well beyond 150 (it is a small irony that the first-century Terme boxer illustrates the cover of the paperback edition). Three case studies punctuate this chronological narrative – Olympia and Delphi; Cyrene and Paestum; and Classical Athens – providing a keen sense of place and allowing a closer look at the Greek colonies. The Archaic and Classical periods receive the greatest attention, with four chapters each. By comparison the Hellenistic period comes across as something of an afterthought, perhaps its inevitable fate at the end of the semester. Chryselephantine statues and Polycleitus and his Spear Bearer are idiosyncratically pigeon-holed as Early Classical (the Doryphorus captioned c. 460, but the sculptor's floruit placed 450–410, a rare lapse), but otherwise the arrangement is canonical. Each chapter begins with a map and a chronological table of key events and monuments, and ends with a one-page summary of bullet points, a useful study aid. Numerous sidebars allow a closer look at selected works and issues, and judiciously chosen ancient texts are quoted throughout. A glossary and a three-page bibliography complete the book.

The illustrations are abundant and of stunning quality, and most are in colour (even the line art is blue); they include all the familiar works and several original choices, as well as some excellent explanatory images (e.g. of the steps of the lost-wax process, and of how workers manipulated architectural blocks into place). The omission of dimensions from the captions is unfortunate, especially since relative scale has been blithely ignored by the designer. Nikandre and the diminutive Daedalic bronze figurine from Delphi are shown at the same size, and a bronze hoplite figurine from Messenia towers over the Metropolis Apollo – described as ‘quite small’, but not that small. The most unfortunate case is that of the Akragas kouros and the Kritian boy, which N. uses to illustrate how differences in size allowed different solutions to technical problems; unfortunately for his point, they are printed at precisely the same size.

N. is impressively well-read and the text is up to date, featuring both new discoveries (e.g. that the Peplos kore may represent Artemis) and newly discovered objects (e.g. the cult statue of Apollo from Metropolis; chariot wheels at Kalapodi), though in a highly uncharacteristic fumble, the single plan of the Athenian agora predates the discovery of the Stoa Poikile 30 years ago.

N. is a master of formal analysis. With frequent injunctions to ‘look closer’ or ‘look again’, he leads the viewer through perceptive analyses that reveal new aspects of the piece in question. He uses a precise vocabulary of description and interpretation throughout; I particularly admire his treatment of drapery, which he demystifies through his definition of motion, modelling and chain (catenary) lines. Sculpture receives the fullest attention, followed by architecture and then painted pottery, wall-painting and mosaics, with coins and luxury items brought in at strategic points. N.'s cultural analysis is slanted towards large-scale developments and abstract ideas, easily defensible in a text of this sort, and he is at pains to demonstrate the ways in which the monuments are embedded in the social and political fabric of their time. His interests do not extend to the mundane activities of daily life or such workaday material culture as tools, shipping containers, ballots or beehives, though he is adept at the use of minor works to evoke the spirit of an age. Despite lip-service to archaeology and an occasional attempt to alert students to the different approach it offers, the orientation is emphatically art historical.

The book is strongly marked as N.'s particular vision of the development of Greek art and society, and one may wonder if this is entirely appropriate to an introductory text. N. tells a coherent story, stressing certain favourite themes, such as the conflict between the elite and the middling man or the dêmos, and interpretative concepts (sign, mimêsis) that no doubt work well for him in the classroom, but with which not all teachers will be comfortable. Factual errors are few (though the claim that Cephalus was an Ethiopian prince is baffling [p. 203]), but N. does occasionally present conjecture as fact, as, for example, when he writes of the nascent Athenian democracy ‘trumping the Alkmeonids’ (p. 192) and their temple at Delphi by the construction of the Old Temple to Athena, and ‘within a decade or so’ (p. 204) remaking the city of Athens with a new agora and assembly place. But the date of the Pnyx cannot be pinpointed within half a century; two committed scholarly camps debate whether the new agora was established in the late sixth century or, conversely, after the Persian sack (N. chooses a middle ground of the 490s); and the father of democracy was himself an Alcmeonid. N.'s scenario is neat and satisfying but not as firmly grounded as he suggests. Similarly, controversy still surrounds the gender of the child handling the peplos on the Parthenon frieze, Philip II's ethnicity and the identity of the occupant of Tomb II at Vergina (according to N., male; Hellenised but not Greek; and Philip Arrhidaeus).

Many of N.'s readings are striking, but they will not be congenial to everyone. Some will be startled to learn that the Olympia Zeus and Ganymede is ‘a homoerotic version of the lion-and-bull maulings so popular on Archaic pediments’ (pp. 181–2) and that ‘there is a nasty side’ to the Nike parapet and its ‘frank eroticization of warfare’ (p. 290). Much of the immediacy of the text comes from N.'s seeming ability to get inside the heads of the ancient patrons and consumers of this art; and so we learn, ‘conservative aristocrats tended to sneer at coinage as the very emblem of crassness’ (p. 136) and, ‘a statue, especially a statue of a woman, was often seen as a sort of vessel or container, concealing something inside’ (p. 201). No doubt N. can support these provocative claims, but as bald statements of fact they bring one up short. There are places, too, where the desire to make a telling point leads to confusion. Of the east pediment of the temple of Zeus at Olympia, N. writes, ‘it is clear that the god turns away from Oinomaos and toward the young hero’, while stressing in the caption that ‘the arrangement of the figures is fiercely controversial: who should stand to Zeus’ right?' (p. 228).

None the less, this is a learned, stimulating and highly informative book. There is much to be learned from it and it is to be recommended to readers who already have some familiarity with the subject. Its suitability as a textbook will depend on the approach espoused by the teacher, but for those in tune with N.'s vision of Greek art it will be an easy choice.