Mainly as a result of having an Asian Studies focus as an undergraduate, I didn’t have any Greco-Roman-centric view of the ancient world that needed to be shed. In turn, the “The Far Edges of the Known World, did not end up being the kind of eye-opening experience for me that I think was intended by the author, and I foree many other readers having a very similar experience depending on their respective educational experiences, or simply based on where they were born and raised or where their ancestors originated from.

That being said, I do feel that this will be an effective read for those who do heavily view the past as a time and place where civilization was far more Mediterranean-centric and homogeneous than it actually ever was. Also, even though I wasn’t awakened from any oversimplified historic viewpoints, I still found this to be an interesting reading experience overall. While I already come in with a decent sense of just how far more intermixed, interconnected, and diverse the past was than what is commonly thought, I never refuse any opportunity to read about any new examples of these historical realities, and thoroughly enjoyed the fresh array provided here by Rees.