Description
Product Description
Chosen as Main Selection, History Book Club
For thousands of years, people have built walls and assaulted them, admired walls and reviled them. Great walls have appeared on every continent, the handiwork of Persians, Romans, Chinese, Inca, Ukrainians, and dozens of other peoples. They have accompanied the rise of cities, nations, and empires. And yet they rarely appear in our history books.
In
Walls, David Frye makes a powerful case for rewriting history. Drawing on evidence from around the world, as well as his own experiences on archaeological digs, Frye takes us on a provocative and occasionally humorous journey across windswept deserts and grassy, Northumbrian hills. As Frye guides us through a maze of exotic locales, investigating the coldest of cold cases, he gradually exposes a broader story with implications for the present as well as the past. The history of walls becomes more than a tale of bricks and stone; it becomes the story of who we are and how we came to be.
Review
"[Told] with eloquence and panache . . . [Frye] is enviably good at turning historical and archaeological evidence into vivid prose, and his writing is as clear as on any wall."
—Wall Street Journal
“[A] lively history.”
—The New Yorker
"These are good stories and Frye tells them well...a timely and interesting book."
—
Financial Times
“Insights abound in every chapter…The book is helpfully peppered with maps and a timeline for historical orientation and packs an impressive amount of scholarship and storytelling into its relatively compact perimeter.
Walls could add a level of context to the current heated discussion of walls in the U.S.”
—Booklist
"Readers will find Frye's rumination—on the reasons walls exist and will continue to exist, what they can and cannot do, and their contribution to the growth of civilization—informative, relevant, and thought-provoking."
—
Publishers Weekly
“A sturdy historical tour of walls and their builders—and their discontents as well. Provocative, well-written, and—with walls rising everywhere on the planet—timely.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“A lively popular history of an oft-overlooked element in the development of human society.”
—Library Journal
"A colorful crash course in world history . . . insightful and entertaining, [Frye] offers a perspective for understanding the reemergence of these barriers today."
—Shelf Awareness
“I walked Hadrian’s Wall as a teenager, ran some miles along China’s Great Wall as a fit young man, stood transfixed in horrified awe beneath the Berlin Wall…I love stories of walls, and David Frye’s marvelous book—timed to coincide with the building of yet another engagingly hateful structure on our southern frontier—was a perfect delight. A
mur de force, indeed.”
—Simon Winchester, New York Times bestselling author of The Professor and the Madman, Krakatoa, and The Map That Changed the World
"David Frye's
Walls turns 5,000 years of history outside in. Instead of focusing on the centers of civilizations, he illuminates the boundaries where civilizations collide. From ancient Mesopotamia through Rome to the presidency of Donald Trump, Frye brilliantly crafts a unique view of history with valuable lessons for today."
—Jack Weatherford, New York Times bestselling author of Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World
About the Author
David Frye is a professional historian, whose views have been sought in interviews by the Science Channel, CNBC, National Geographic, the History Channel, BBC Radio, The Washington Post, Rolling Stone, Wired, and many other media outlets. A specialist in late ancient history, Frye received his PhD from Duke University and has participated in several archaeological excavations internationally. His articles have appeared in a variety of academic journals, popular websites, magazines, and blogs, including McSweeney's, Time, BBC World History, Medium, and MHQ.
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