The collapse of numerous interrelated civilisations in the Eastern Mediterranean of the late-second millennium b.c. is a major historical watershed. C., renowned specialist in the Late Bronze Age of that region, has revisited this collapse in a popularising overview produced for the Princeton series Turning Points in Ancient History. Notwithstanding his title, C. has not centred his work on a single calendar year, but offers instead a panorama of the Eastern Mediterranean in the second half of the second millennium b.c. He dedicates most space to the civilisation(s) that collapsed, somewhat less on the collapse itself, and even less on 1177 b.c., when Egypt was supposedly invaded by the ‘Sea Peoples’.

In his first three chapters, C. describes the flourishing and interaction of different civilisations in the Eastern Mediterranean of the fifteenth to thirteenth centuries b.c. The fourth chapter covers the wave of destructions at c. 1177 b.c. and the fifth analyses the potential causes of the collapse, from natural and man-made catastrophes, to economic and systemic failure. C. argues against linear explanatory models of the collapse, and envisages a number of different stressors to the societies of the region. The narrative is based on an admirably wide range of textual and archaeological evidence and a rich literature list, to which one should now add C. Broodbank, The Making of the Middle Sea (2013), pp. 373–415, 445–72, which presents a considerably different approach to the subject. Significantly, C. covers many of the latest archaeological developments in the field and the laboratory, including some hitherto known only from the international press. C. makes some reference to theoretical trends current in archaeology and anthropology, but does not engage extensively with theoretical and cross-cultural approaches to the collapse and especially the resilience of civilisations.

The book is inadequately illustrated, especially for a popularising work, but is well written and edited (one noticeable error regards the etymology of thalassocracy on p. 22). In response to a remark by Fernard Braudel, C. presents his story as some kind of drama with ‘Acts’ (chapters), ‘Dramatis personae’ and a Baroque painting of the sack of Troy on the cover. Non-specialists may have some difficulties with the structure of the prologue and Chapter 1. The prologue begins with the invasion of Egypt in 1177 b.c., continues with the earlier invasion of 1207 b.c. and then returns to the later invasion, with paragraphs on largely unrelated, secondary themes in between. The review of the fifteenth century in Chapter 1 begins with yet another invasion of Egypt (in 1720 b.c.), and is interrupted by historiographical essays on the major civilisations of the time. None the less, the rest of the work reads smoothly and the narrative is enhanced by fascinating short stories drawn from ancient literature and modern historiography.

C. has offered a wide-ranging, up-to-date and popularising account of the history of the Late Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean. The work is primarily addressed to scholars and graduate students, but is also accessible to the general public and could well serve as the basis of a documentary film on that turning point in ancient history.