This short and lively book is a pleasure to read. It's not about coins, directly. It's about what coins tell us about the Hellenistic world, and how they can be used as primary sources. The themes are rather insistently contemporary to our world - or rather to Thonemann's academic milieu. The first two sections are on 'globalization' and 'identity', and I think he insufficiently emphasises what was different about the ancient world, hewing to close to current fashions of academic study. I would emphasise more clan and kinship rather than nation and kingship. But overall I found it excellent. A quick read, well illustrated, gives a sold background and introduction to key themes and busts a few myths along the way. Anyone else read it?
I've not read it, but now I want to thanks to your review. It seems similar to Michael Grant's 1968 Roman companion piece, which I've also yet to read, alas. https://www.amazon.com/Roman-History-Coins-Imperial-Historian/dp/0521095492
I mentioned it here as well. In fact that book made we want to get my first lifetime tet: Not sure why I can't get the image to load...
Thanks for the recommendations, I'll have to add both books to my shelves. One of the first books I read about coins is The Hellenistic Kingdoms by Norman Davis and Colin M. Kraay. It covers the Seleucid, Ptolemaic, Bactrian, and Antigonid monarchies and the coins they struck. There are a number of high quality coin photos as well as histories of the monarchs of those dynasties. Thanks to this book I became interested in Ptolemaic and Seleucid coins, and would highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in the period of the Diadochi.
I was fortunate at Berkeley to be able to take two ancient history courses from leading historian Erich Gruen. One was called Imperial Rome and the other was the Hellenistic World. Gruen wrote the classic book The Hellenistic World and the Coming of Rome, which I highly recommend to fellow numismatists. https://www.amazon.com/Hellenistic-World-Coming-Rome/dp/0520057376
