
Land Between the Rivers
A 5,000-Year History of Iraq
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Narrated by:
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Jonathan Keeble
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By:
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Bartle Bull
About this listen
At the start of the fourth millennium BC, civilization arrived with the advent of cities and the invention of writing that began to replace legend with history. This occurred on the floodplains of southern Iraq where the rivers Tigris and Euphrates meet the Persian Gulf. As Bartle Bull reveals in his magisterial history, "if one divides the 5000 years of human civilization into ten periods of five centuries each, during the first nine of these the world's leading city was in one of the three regions of current day Iraq"—or to use its Greek name, Mesopotamia.
Bull chronicles the story of Iraq from the exploits of Gilgamesh to the fall of the Iraqi monarchy that ushered in its modern era. The land between the rivers has been the melting pot and battleground of countless outsiders. Here, Judaism was born and the Sunni-Shia schism took its bloody shape.
Central themes play out over the millennia: humanity's need for freedom versus the co-eternal urge of tyranny; the conflict and cross-fertilization of East and West with Iraq so often the hinge. We tend to view today's tensions in the Middle East through the prism of the last hundred years. Bull's sweeping achievement reminds us that the region defined by the land between the rivers has for five millennia played a uniquely central role on the global stage.
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Story
Civilization was born 8,000 years ago, between the floodplains of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, when migrants from the surrounding mountains and deserts began to create increasingly sophisticated urban societies. In the cities that they built, half of human history took place. In Babylon, Paul Kriwaczek tells the story of Mesopotamia from the earliest settlements seven thousand years ago to the eclipse of Babylon in the sixth century BCE. Bringing the people of this land to life in vibrant detail, the author chronicles the rise and fall of power during this period.
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Solid overview 3000 years of history
- By Alsor2000 on 07-19-20
By: Paul Kriwaczek
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Assyria
- The Rise and Fall of the World's First Empire
- By: Eckart Frahm
- Narrated by: Matthew Lloyd Davies
- Length: 15 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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At its height in 660 BCE, the kingdom of Assyria stretched from the Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf. It was the first empire the world had ever seen. Here, historian Eckart Frahm tells the epic story of Assyria and its formative role in global history. Assyria’s wide-ranging conquests have long been known from the Hebrew Bible and later Greek accounts. But nearly two centuries of research now permit a rich picture of the Assyrians and their empire beyond the battlefield.
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Too much volume change in narration
- By Erin on 06-19-24
By: Eckart Frahm
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The Eastern Front
- A History of the Great War 1914-1918
- By: Nick Lloyd
- Narrated by: Elliot Fitzpatrick
- Length: 22 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Drawing on the latest scholarship as well as eyewitness reports, diary entries, and memoirs, Lloyd moves from the great battles of 1914 to the final collapse of the Central Powers in 1918, showing how a local struggle between Austria-Hungary and Serbia spiraled into a massive conflagration that pulled in Germany, Russia, Italy, Romania, and Bulgaria.
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Exceptional
- By Christian Lewis on 05-26-25
By: Nick Lloyd
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Fire and Blood
- A History of Mexico
- By: T. R. Fehrenbach
- Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon
- Length: 35 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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T. R. Fehrenbach brilliantly delineates the contrasts and conflicts between the many Mexicos, unraveling the history while weaving a fascinating tapestry of beauty and brutality: the Amerindians, who wrought from the vulnerable land a great indigenous Meso-American civilization by the first millennium BC; the successive reigns of Olmec, Maya, Toltec, and Mexic masters, who ruled through an admirably efficient bureaucracy and the power of the priests, propitiating the capricious gods with human sacrifices; the Spanish conquistadors, and much more.
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Good book bad narration
- By M. A. Chris Raine on 03-23-19
By: T. R. Fehrenbach
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The Lives of the Caesars
- By: Suetonius, Tom Holland - introduction translator
- Narrated by: Justin Avoth, Tom Holland
- Length: 15 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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The ancient Roman empire was the supreme arena, where emperors had no choice but to fight, to thrill, to dazzle. To rule as a Caesar was to stand as an actor upon the great stage of the world. No biographies invite us into the lives of the Caesars more vividly or intimately than those by Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, written from the center of Rome and power, in the early 2nd century AD. By placing each Caesar in the context of the generations that had gone before, and connecting personality with policy, Suetonius succeeded in painting Rome’s ultimate portraits of power.
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So Many Insights!
- By Tony on 06-15-25
By: Suetonius, and others
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The Golden Road
- How Ancient India Transformed the World
- By: William Dalrymple
- Narrated by: William Dalrymple
- Length: 13 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Golden Road, revered historian William Dalrymple corrects the record, telling the captivating story of ancient India’s ascent through a swift and breathtaking tour of the ideas and places Indians created. Treks into the sunless depths of cave monasteries illuminate the origins and spread of Buddhism. Far-flung archaeological expeditions—from the sand-blown Red Sea coast of Egypt, to Afghan mountain refuges, to verdant Cambodian jungles—reveal the impact of Indian commerce.
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fascinating history but why did he not learn to pronounce the Chinese names?
- By Yam on 07-10-25
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The Eurasian Century
- Hot Wars, Cold Wars, and the Making of the Modern Century
- By: Hal Brands
- Narrated by: Tim Fannon
- Length: 11 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Hal Brands argues that a better understanding of Eurasia's strategic geography can illuminate the contours of rivalry and conflict in today's world. The Eurasian Century explains how revolutions in technology and warfare, and the rise of toxic ideologies of conquest, made Eurasia the center of twentieth-century geopolitics—with pressing implications for the struggles that will define the twenty-first.
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Worth the read.
- By Chip Eckert on 02-24-25
By: Hal Brands
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Henry V
- The Astonishing Triumph of England's Greatest Warrior King
- By: Dan Jones
- Narrated by: Dan Jones
- Length: 14 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Henry V reigned over England for only nine years and four months and died at the age of just thirty-five, but he looms over the landscape of the late Middle Ages and beyond. The victor of Agincourt, he is remembered as the acme of kingship, a model to be closely imitated by his successors. William Shakespeare deployed Henry V as a study in youthful folly redirected to sober statesmanship. For one modern medievalist, Henry was, quite simply, “the greatest man who ever ruled England.”
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Amazing Book & Fantastic Storyteller
- By L. Reilly on 11-26-24
By: Dan Jones
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The Mesopotamian Riddle
- An Archaeologist, a Soldier, a Clergyman and the Race to Decipher the World's Oldest Writing
- By: Joshua Hammer
- Narrated by: Matthew Lloyd Davies
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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From the ruins of Persepolis to lawless outposts of the crumbling Ottoman Empire, The Mesopotamian Riddle whisks you on a wild adventure through the golden age of archaeology in an epic quest to understand our past.
By: Joshua Hammer
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The Achilles Trap
- Saddam Hussein, the C.I.A., and the Origins of America's Invasion of Iraq
- By: Steve Coll
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 17 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, its message was clear: Iraq, under the control of strongman Saddam Hussein, possessed weapons of mass destruction that, if left unchecked, posed grave danger to the world. But when no WMDs were found, the United States and its allies were forced to examine the political and intelligence failures that had led to the invasion and the occupation, and the civil war that followed. One integral question has remained unsolved.
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From the Saddam’s Point of View.
- By philip on 03-08-24
By: Steve Coll
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Weavers, Scribes, and Kings
- A New History of the Ancient Near East
- By: Amanda H. Podany
- Narrated by: Amanda H. Podany
- Length: 18 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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In this sweeping history of the ancient Near East, Amanda Podany takes listeners on a gripping journey from the creation of the world's first cities to the conquests of Alexander the Great. The book is built around the life stories of many ancient men and women, from kings, priestesses, and merchants to brickmakers, musicians, and weavers. Their habits of daily life, beliefs, triumphs, and crises, and the changes that people faced over time are explored through their own written words and the buildings, cities, and empires in which they lived.
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word of advice
- By Jim Davis on 08-04-23
By: Amanda H. Podany