I had a very hard time with the
place names in the first version I borrowed from the library, so I'm very glad for the maps in this
edition. Also now some years later, I've forgotten all but the biggest names (but I still remember
Cyrus!), and there are a daunting number of names in the book. But for all that, it's sort of an
easy read, because it's anecdotal. I remember what happened, and more or less what order it happened
in. I remember the major nations and what they were like -- the Persians, the Scythians, the
Lacedaemons,...) More importantly, I remember the tenor of the book and of the times. I have a sense
for the role that the gods and oracles played, the number of wars an average person experienced in
their lifetime, the consequences of war, the relationship between men and women, the sort of thing
which motivated nations to do what they did. (I detect no bigotry or chauvenism in Herodotus.) And
it's just replete with very good 'histories' of all sorts, which will stay with me forever -- the
circumnavigation of Africa, the Babylonian queen who diverted the river in a huge engineering
project to protect the city, the Scythians rites, his impressions of the amazing Egyptian labyrinth,
the fabulous hearsay about what the Northern climates were like.

And I'm left with a different
perspective, I think, than I was before. I don't think, for example, that I could ever be a full
blooded pacifist after reading Herodotus. (It's very hard to picture how a pacifist would have
survived very long in that world, it seems to me.) I think I also have a better sense for the human
psychological need for religious devotion. And I'm convinced that religion is an excuse for war
rather than the real motivating factor, because although they had plenty of wars, he doesn't seem to
suggest that anyone believed in a right or wrong religion.

Anyway, this is one of the books I'm
very glad I read.

Some of his arguments might not be
valid in our eyes,but I beilieve that he had tried his best and he generally made the most
reasonable conclusions based on the information available at that time.

I really enjoy the
chatting style of this book. I love the Thucydides too, and it is really interesting experience to
read Histories and Peloponnesian War at the same time. After several pages of stuffy war narrative
by Thucydides, I can't wait to turn to the relaxing chat with Herodotus. And after being entertained
by too many stories in Histories, I'd like to switch back to the challenging Peloponnesian War. If I
can choose, I would like to have Herodotus as my grandpa and Thucydides as my father; they are among
those finest minds in the human history.