The premise behind this book seemed pretty good at the time: writer tracing the steps of Herodotus. I thought it could not fail. However, the text is extremely dry, full of a lot of digressions (and I don't mean that in a good way), and overall, the book failed to hold my interest after two chapters or so. If you want the Herodotus experience, just go back and read Herodotus. ( )

Interesting book that seems to be a copy-cat rendition of a much better written book, Kapuscinski's Travels with Herodotus. Marozzi has a fascination with sex (ummmm, don't we all?) that he projects into the book through the words of Herodotus (who is probably focused on it as well), somewhat unnecessarily. Oftentimes, I suspect that he forgets he is writing a book about Herodotus, injecting a phrase such as 'Herodotus would have understood.' at the conclusion of a long aside about this or that. Interesting, but it does not stand up to the much better book mentioned above except that, 1) it is a bit more recent in its travelogue comparisons, and 2) it shouldn't really be compared side by side since there was only a year's difference in the introduction of the two books to the English-speaking world. ( )

Les livres historiques sont intéressants, mais ce n’est pas la peine de leur faire dire n’importe quoi…
J’ai commencé à lire ce livre en espérant découvrir un pan de l’histoire et un personnage, Hérodote, qui me sont très peu connus. Les voyages d’Hérodote hier et leur parallèle moderne semblaient une façon intéressante d’essayer de comprendre une partie du monde qui fait la une de l’actualité plus souvent qu’à son tour.
Mais si le prétexte pour écrire un livre est bon, il faut savoir l’utiliser. Ici, il semble que ce que l’on connaît d’Hérodote soit trop ténu pour en faire le fil conducteur d’un récit. Alors l’auteur brode, relate des faits sans rapport avec Hérodote, mais cherchant toujours à trouver un lien bien ténu et artificiel pour justifier son écart historique. Cela rend le déploiement des idées plutôt lourd et la lecture plutôt laborieuse.
Et j’ai finalement rendu les armes lorsque l’auteur a convoqué Hérodote pour condamner la guerre en Irak. Certes, on peut faire des parallèles historiques, tirer des leçons… Mais des avis péremptoires et totalement anachroniques tels que « Hérodote aurait été tout à fait opposé à cette guerre » me paraissent déplacés et absolument pas crédibles.
J’ai donc finalement abandonné ce livre après un peu tiers, dommage car quelques réflexions sur l’histoire et son importance auraient pu être intéressantes pour la néophyte que je suis. Néophyte, certes, mais pas dupe d’une démarche intellectuelle pas toujours très honnête à mon goût…

LOVED this book ~ it's humane and genuinely involving: on of the best books of the year. Reviewed on Amazon. ( )

http://shawjonathan.wordpress.com/2010/04/25/the-man-who-invented-history/

Justin Marozzi is an English travel writer–historian, at pains to make us know he’s not an academic – more like a Herodotus fanboy: Herodotus invented the West, Thucydides sux, and Plutarch double sux (those last two aren’t direct quotes – Marozzi is much more grown-up than that).

Marozzi sets out in this book to follow in Herodotus’s footsteps, visiting places he visited, or at least claimed to visit, quoting good bits from his Histories and reflecting on the enduring relevance of some of his themes. He visits Turkey (Herodotus’ birthplace Halicarnassus, now Bodrum), Iraq (where Marozzi spent a year ‘setting up a nationwide civil affairs program’, whatever that is, but manages to take us with him on a private guided visit to the mostly inaccessible museum in Babylon), Egypt and of course Greece. He finds value in Herodotus’ genial appreciation of cultural diversity and mockery of cultural arrogance (it seems that ‘Everyone thinks his own society’s customs are best’ was a refrain in Herodotus; it certainly is in Marozzi, with many confirming examples). He finds in Iraq and elsewhere validating echoes of Herodotus’ belief that hubris leads to nemesis and his repeated observation that those in power ignore at their peril those who counsel caution. He enjoys and emulates Herodotus’ propensity for sexual titillation, though here he seems to be trying a little too hard to establish his non-academic bona fides, and comes off as a happily married man hoping to pass as a bit of a lad. Above all, he conveys a sense of Herodotus as an excellent travelling companion, a great listener, an accomplished entertainer (apparently he wrote his books to be read aloud, and Marozzi imagines a number of reading–performances for us), a tireless gatherer of information, a cheerful embellisher, and one who got it right more often than he has been given credit for.

One chapter that stood out for me is he one on the Southeast European Joint History Project (JHP). In a visit to Thessaloniki, not part of Herodotus’ world, but justifying its place in this book because of the light it casts on the nature of history, Marozzi interviews Nenad Sabek, chain-smoking director of the NGO that produces the history. The state of history-teaching in the Balkans as surveyed ten years ago makes Australia’s History Wars look like a game in a kindergarten sandpit. Sebek tells Marozzi, and us, that the school history syllabus

'is where you instil into the young a sense of victim mentality, a feeling that everyone around them is their adversary and that’s how it’s always been. … I believe history is one of the fields where if you teach it badly you produce serious damage way ahead in the future. If you tell a ten-year-old his country has always been beaten up by its neighbour throughout its history, and then years later its war, he’s wearing uniform and he’s got a gun in his hands and his leaders are saying, "They’re still slaughtering us," this is what he believes and he goes on a rampage.'

The JHP has produced a set of history textbooks that offer a multi-faceted account of the seven centuries from the emergence of the Ottoman Empire to the Second World War that aims to supplement (rather than replace, which would be politically impossible) the lethal nationalistic-victim texts currently in use. It sounds like a project that could, even should, be emulated in any number of hotspots. ( )