Duncan Noble

My most disappointing read yet of 2016, and I'm typing this on the last of November.

Nominally, a popular history book about chariot and cavalry warfare, but despite the subtitle, cavalry receives little attention. That could have been lived with, particularly as I came to it primarily out of an interest in chariotry. What makes the book such a disappointment is that the bits I do know something about have so many errors that I can hardly trust it about subjects I'm not already knowledgeable about. Ancillary annoyances include a chaotic disposition, frequent ambiguity, intermittent illogic, and occasional contradictions. The maps are unusually useless even by the relaxed standards of niche publishing and typographical errors abound (which last is something of a specialty of the publisher, Pen & Sword).

Consistency of terminology isn't Noble's strong point either: a particularly bad example is "Central Asia", by which he sometimes seem to understand the steppe belt from the Ukraine to Manchuria, sometimes the area south of the steppe between the Caspian and China; and at one point explicitly takes to include Armenia (which is said to border China). At yet other times it's anyone's guess what he means.

The perhaps best part of the book - recalling that "best" is a relative term - is the appendix about Noble's own experiments with a replica of a Sumerian battle-cart. It's considerably better written than the main text, and while I won't vouch for the accuracy one can reasonably hope he knows what he's talking about here.… (més)