Demand begins, after a brief consideration of Neolithic, with the Bronze Age and ends with Alexander. A one-page Epilogue covers the Hellenistic world. Almost one quarter of the book deals with the Bronze Age, but this emphasis is understandable when one considers that at this point the students will have no narrative ancient sources to read. During this section of the course, however, students could be reading the Iliad with profit. To keep the book as short as it is, Demand has largely passed over social history.
Religion also receives scant attention.
The eight pages devoted, according to the Index, to the religion of classical Athens deal in fact with the Periclean building program and the sophists. Greek athletics, among other pots and pans topics, get bare mention. Demand's focus is on the meat and potatoes, leaving instructors free to give whatever emphasis they feel necessary to other synchronic truths and diachronic movements in the story of the Hellenes. One of the great strengths of this book is its maps, though there are no battlefield maps. Each chapter ends with a useful list of Important Places, providing some guide and review for the student frustrated by the welter of unfamiliar names.