557 pages
Published 2022
Read from April 13 to April 25
Rating: 4 out of 5
A vast survey of Mesopotamian history, constrained only to the times and places that gave us records inscribed in cuneiform, this book promised it would pay particular attention to the traces of common people normally ignored in such historical surveys: slaves, brewers, artisans, merchants, priestesses, the titular weavers. That’s an irresistible selling line. I went back and forth about whether to invest all that money on buying a tome, but in the end I have no regrets.
I might take issue with this book’s execution — Podany spends much (maybe even most) of the book in the company of kings instead of weavers. But all the kings-and-wars bullshit is sadly necessary to relate the rest of this volume to the standard histories we might be taught, a grounding context of empires and conquest that Americans certainly expect from their history books. (Also unfortunate but expected: tying the later chapters in with Biblical “history.”) We could have done with a lot fewer kings here, but it could have been a lot worse.
The fact that Podany spends as much time as she does with common folk and merchants and scribes elevates Weavers far above the likes of, say, Susan Wise Bauer’s The History of the Ancient World, which was all Great Men all the time (and was all the worse for it). Any history book that at least attempts to get away from Great Men narratives deserves accolades.
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