Ask any Italian student or scholar of the ancient Near East to name their principal university text book and the reply will almost certainly be L.'s Antico Oriente: Storia, Societa, Economia. L. has now updated the contents with the text translated into English by Soraia Tabatabai. Will this revised edition become a standard university reference book across the English speaking world? It certainly deserves to be. However, since the publication of the Italian version in 1988 (and a Spanish version in 1995), a number of excellent historical surveys of the ancient Near East have appeared in English: those by A. Kuhrt (The Ancient Near East: c.3000–330 bc ([1997]) and M. Van De Mieroop (A History of the Ancient Near East: ca. 3000–323 bc [2006]) justly appear on undergraduate reading lists. Indeed, as L. acknowledges in the book's preface, a volume of this size and detail may not meet the requirements of today's increasingly module-based courses. None the less, L. has certainly produced one of the finest and detailed accounts of the ancient Near East for both the expert and novice alike.

The book begins with the key question of how to define the ancient Near East. It remains a significant problem. The writings of H. Frankfort, especially his most popular work, The Art and Architecture of the Ancient Orient (1954), have left an enduring legacy through which ancient Western Asia is understood as subdivided into a centre, that is Mesopotamia (Iraq and eastern Syria), with a series of peripheries, basically identified by their constituent ‘peoples’. Today we recognise a much more complex historical framework with a vast number of contemporaneous and mutually interrelated cultures. The challenge of describing this complexity and the associated methodological problems in a clear and meaningful manner is confronted here with apparent ease; a testament to L.'s depth of learning and skills as a teacher.

L. takes the reader on a meticulously detailed journey from prehistory to the rise of the Persian Empire around 500 b.c., drawing on some of the latest archaeological findings and interpretations. It is history rather than philology and anthropology that interests him, with a focus on the interaction of ideology, society and economy. What is missing from the account are the artistic, religious and literary aspects of the various cultures he explores and many readers may find this disappointing. L. acknowledges the lacuna, arguing reasonably that these features ‘have to be considered individually before being successfully included in this historical reconstruction’ (p. xxiii).

Unlike comparable works, L. starts his story in deep prehistory. This can be difficult territory for a historian but some of the archaeological and anthropological theories that underpin its reconstruction are introduced effortlessly. It is important to note that the cultural patterns described here are not forgotten once we reach the historical chapters. The detailed account begins in earnest with the emergence of cities and states across Mesopotamia during the late fourth and third millennia b.c. Record keeping and the development of writing are explored but firmly situated in the context of changing labour management and specialisation, politics and state ideology. A chapter focusing on north Mesopotamia and the Italian-excavated site of Ebla in modern Syria is especially welcome as other surveys in English often touch only briefly on this region. Successive chapters then explore the interaction of Mesopotamian states with neighbouring regions, including those of the Hittites of Anatolia during the later second millennium b.c., and Israel, Phoenicia and the Aramean kingdoms in the first millennium b.c. The final five chapters are devoted to the Neo-Assyrian Empire that unified the Near East, and its Babylonian and Persian successors. Despite what might first appear as a Frankfort-style compartmentalised approach to the organisation of the book, L. never loses sight of the interrelations between the various cultures. This is especially true when he is describing the technological achievements and ideologies of the peoples of the ancient Near East.

For a text of this length and depth very few errors have crept in during the editing and translating process. A rare exception occurs on page 122 where the destruction of Mari by Sargon is given as 1350 b.c. when it is presumably intended to be 2350 b.c. Occasionally the translation into English betrays its Italian origins: ‘Despite having suffered considerable modifications and damages, it still stands as a testimony of the pinnacle of Assyrian political and military power, of its economic and labour mobilisation, and of its celebratory and propagandistic expression … Overall, the precariousness afflicting Assyria a couple of decennia earlier now seems overcome’ (p. 480). But such moments are rare and, when they do occur, the meaning is not difficult to comprehend. I am not a fan of the inclusion of too many dates in surveys such as this but a few more might have been helpful for the uninitiated; some chapters begin without a clear sense of where one is in time, highlighting the fact that this is not a book that can be dipped into easily but needs to be read in its entirety. The text is reinforced with 172 very clear black-and-white maps and illustrations, 18 chronological tables and 50 translations. The latter are particularly welcome and enjoyable with the inclusion of texts that range across the full spectrum of ancient cuneiform documents, from scribal lexicons to royal inscriptions.

Writing a history of the ancient Near East is difficult (and producing a continuous history probably impossible) as nearly every conclusion reached in the procedure is open to debate depending on the questions asked, the techniques used and the experience brought to the task. L. brings half a century of research and teaching to the enterprise and has produced an account that is very much his own, often describing historical events with a certainty that others may want to challenge. If you need a quick introduction this may not be the book for you and some will find its detail difficult to penetrate easily for comparative material. Nevertheless, readers of Classical Review needing a comprehensive yet accessible survey, written by a leading Assyriologist, could do no better than this book. It will be an essential text for students of the ancient Near East while others who take the time to read it will be rewarded with extraordinary insights. L. deserves our thanks for producing a volume of astonishing detail but with such lightness of touch.