The Peoples of the Hills
Charles Burney,
David Marshall Lang
324 pages including index
published in 1971
I picked up The Peoples of the Hills because I wanted to know more about the history of the caucasus in general and Armenia in particular, mainly because Doug of Halfway Down the Danube had been blogging about his being stationed there. He had been posting about some of Armenia’s history and it seemed interesting. Since I knew next to nothing about any of the history, espcially the early history of Armenia, Georgia and the Caucasus, The Peoples of the Hills seemed a good start.
Unfortunately however it disappointed. For a start, I didn’t realise how dated it was, having originally been written in 1971 and reprinted for the History of Civilization series published by Phoenix Press. Not that there was much choice in the library I picked this up: it was this or nothing. In thirty years a lot can change and I’ve found that on the whole more modern history books are preferable to older ones (this is not an absolute rule of course). But what also disappointed me was the writing itself. This is, unfortunately, a very dull book, full of facts but lacking sparkle.