I love the topic, and I’m glad this book exists. But it was pretty hard to get through. For the casual reader, it’s too comprehensive and doesn’t connect the dots enough. Alexiou ably covers the topics, but I wish there was just more of a story woven into it. There are just so many details that make the chapters longer but aren’t connected to an interesting story or engaging writing.
I ended up skipping through some of it: I don’t want to read detailed war stories, or biographies of minor figures. The early era and the modern era held the most interest for me, but I felt like the modern era was lacking the detail that the rest of the book had too much of.