Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West by Tom Holland
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Tom Holland’s history of the Persian Wars is thorough, enlightening and eminently readable, striking just the right balance between big-picture analysis and enthralling personal anecdotes. The tricky thing about this conflict — which pitted the small but scrappy city-states of Athens and Sparta against the almost inconceivable might of the Persian Empire under the all-powerful Darius and Xerxes — is that there were very few battles, but to understand them requires a story spanning several generations, dozens of nations and hundreds of names. You can’t understand Xerxes unless you know about Cyrus, you can’t understand the actions of the Greeks unless you know about the Ionians, and you can’t understand any of it without unraveling a morass of double-crosses, palace intrigues, inscrutable oracles and personal vendettas.
So, much like Herodotus, who wrote the first (and in some ways still the best) version of this story, Holland goes way back to before the beginning, tracing the rise of the Persian Empire and the complex factors that drew Asia and Europe ever closer to total war; a war that doesn’t really begin until you’re halfway through the book.
But Herodotus, great pioneer that he was, also let himself get sidetracked by the occasional tall tale or mythical monster. Where Holland bests him is in his clear focus and his ability to get into the heads of his subjects: rarely have I read a history book that so seamlessly adopted multiple points of view. Holland doesn’t just tell us what the Great King did at particular juncture, but why, and from the perspective of the King’s own brand of logic. He also does a pretty good job of making the story relevant to a 21st century audience through the use of modern East vs. West metaphors.
It isn’t perfect. A little more detail surrounding the battles themselves would have been welcome, since — let’s be honest — that’s what most readers will come in for, to get "the real story behind 300" or whatnot. And as clear as Holland’s writing is, the narrative itself can still be hard to follow simply because there’s so much going on. I also found it a much slower read than I expected, chewing on it for the better part of two weeks. But those quibbles aside, Persian Fire is an excellent addition to the canon, and a must-read for anyone interested in a non-academic exploration of the war.