Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Well, I do have a doctorate in linguistics and do have a background in reconstructing Proto-In do-European, the mother language to most European languages as well as Farsi, spoken in Iran, and several languages in India and Pakistan. The author of this book is an archaeologist who is competent as well in historical linguistics. I found the book fascinating, thoughtful, terrifically well researched and well-written, although it rather went on and on about burial sites, and the names for the motley prehistoric cultures got confusing. I suspect that non-scholars would find this daunting. Even scholars who aren't in the thick of archaelogical disputes might find it too technical and nit-picking. I solved the problem once I realized you could skip over the myriad descriptions of kurgans and pottery, and just go to his conclusions at the end of the chapter, occasionally skipping backwards to check on an assertion or two. Since I've just retired from teaching, I'm truly sorry I won't have a class to share some of Anthony's insights with, such as his convincing explanation of why Proto-Indo-Europrean developed gender marking on nouns -- and why it introduced patriarchal gods to replace older goddess religions. In sum, for the intellectually curious and the brave, a very enlightening and (dare I use the cliche) thought-provoking tome.