Sumerians: A History From Beginning to End

Quick easy read

This is a clearly written and well organized introduction to the subject. The significance of this earliest advanced culture is often overlooked in our general educational system. This short volume provides a foundation for the intermediate student of history.

This unreadable “book” is nothing but an unorganized and poorly written literature review. No thesis, topic sentences, larger theme, or structure of any sort. Not to mention a notable lack of proofreading and (this may be a charitable guess) editing. Instead it proceeds by bludgeoning the reader over the head with a formulaic recitation of actual scholars’ titles, names, and theses to create an approximation of a history book. Unfortunately for the author, sources alone do not make good historical writing. Had the author stopped to consider the impact on the reader, perhaps a different book would have been written. One with actual content. A good book. Instead, we are left with a high school approximation of what a history book is; this work reads like a book report pulled directly from Wikipedia the night before. Mr. Freeman may want to read a few more history books to see what decent structure and writing consists of. Otherwise each of his future endeavors will be as disappointingly unreadable as this one.

This book is poorly structured, poorly researched and overall a failing introduction to Sumer. The author rarely expresses a clear thought- both grammatically and thematically. I feel worse for reading it. This is a bad things to say about any book, but there it is.