Memory and the Mediterranean
Fernand Braudel'sMemory and the Mediterraneanis a panoramic and  singular history, a comprehensive synthesis, of that region from pre-historic  times to the beginning of the Byzantine Empire. Braudel's concerns are not the  usual turning points such as battles and political upheaval. Instead, he focuses  on regional and sub-regional vicissitudes (climate, topography, geologic  cataclysms, the very currents of the sea itself) and their legacies, especially  commerce, to trace the reasons behind the risings and falls of the greater  Mediterranean's scores of ancient cultures. What, for example, were the  ramifications of Egypt's lack of forests? How did the discovery of bitumen and  the development of concrete affect, respectively, the Phoenicians and the  Romans?Memory and the Mediterraneanis complex and demanding but in the  end, rewarding. Its point of view is at once Olympian, humble, and richly  commonsensical.--H. O'Billovitch