Jona Lendering lectures in Mediterranean history at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. His earlier work includes An Interim Manager in the Roman Empire: Pliny in Bithynia (1999), The Edges of the World: The Romans between the Schelde and Eems rivers (2000), City in Marble: a guide to Ancient Rome by contemporaries (2002) and Alexander the Great. The fall of the Persian Empire, 340-320 (2004). He maintains the world’s largest ancient history website: www.livius.org.
(Athenaeum-Polak & Van Gennep, 2002, 345 pages)
City in Marble is not the only travel guide on Rome, but it is indispensable for those planning to visit the city. Those structures that, in a common guide, remain famous ruins become, in Jona Lendering’s Guide to Ancient Rome, components of one of the most exciting cities from early world history.
(Athenaeum-Polak & Van Gennep, 2004, 350 pages)
With the world’s military and political leaders currently focused on Mesopotamia and the surrounding region, from Turkey to Pakistan, Jona Lendering provides a fascinating new study of the Macedonian campaign of conquest in the fourth century BC. Leading what was both a punitive expedition and a pre-emptive attack, the ambitious young warlord Alexander marched eastwards to annihilate the army of the King of Asia, Darius II. He succeeded, but the guerrilla war that followed and efforts to capture the ‘hearts and minds’ of the populace demanded greater patience and sacrifice than the military operation itself.
(Athenaeum-Polak & Van Gennep, 2009, 196 pages)
Modern Europe is in many respects indebted to Eastern traditions, not least those of the Islamic world. The Arabs endowed Europe with experimental science, for example, and the notion of equality before the law. We should not underestimate the importance of either, says Jona Lendering. Nor of the implications of his findings for today’s worldwide debate about the supposed ‘clash of civilizations’ between East and West.