2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
With regret, I cannot use this text in my classes., Nov 2 2010
This review is from: Egypt, Greece and Rome: Civilizations of the Ancient Mediterranean (Paperback)
From my first encounter with this book, I wished that I could use it in my ancient history classes at the University of New Brunswick (Saint John). Unfortunately, it suffers from a flaw so fundamental that I simply cannot: it is not properly annotated. Indeed, if my students produced essays that so failed to provide guidance to their sources, the essays would fail, and the students would be warned not to repeat that procedure.
Annotation serves two purposes: it acknowledges the sources of information, and, perhaps more importantly, it allows the reader to pursue the matter in hand. The only systematic referencing in this book is to identify the modern translator of material quoted from ancient texts, without any further reference. How does it benefit the curious student to be told that A or B translated an excerpt from an ancient text, but provide no indication whence the quotation is drawn?
For some time now, many of us have struggled to teach students the art of annotation. To have it so thoroughly undermined in a textbok will, in the end, be more determinative than any amount of effort on our part. What troubles me most of all is the claim in the preface to the second edition that this absence of adequate reference was actually embraced by instructors and professors. I am most decidedly not among them.
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