Once you realize that the author is serious about Homer, and he devotes equal time to each epic, the Iliad and the Odyssey, one has fewer problems as long as one accepts that Greek archeology at the time that Troy fell is his only interest.
. The difficulty is that my wife's college roommate and best friend is Turkish and we have gone to the country many times. The lady's husband arranges many trips to the east of the country, when it is possible to go there, and we have seen everything from Gobekle Tepe to modern architecture. The difficulty with the book, which is fine on its own terms, is that when we went to Perge, there was a gigantic Roman city, which, like many of the Turkish sites, is better than anything in Italy. When we went to another town a few miles away, there was a marvelous site that had been the headquarters for Azitiwataya, a Hittite leader who ran one of the many empires after the empire crashed. Turkey has so many wonderful places to see, and the author doesn't mention anything outside his interest.

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