Author’s afterword:I’ve always been interested in history. I don’t just mean the history that is so often taught in school, mostly politics and war. History includes everything humans have done, and that means the history of technology, of medicine, of fabrics, food, religions—everything.
As a kid, I had a Classics Illustrated comic book of “The Iliad,” a book about medieval European knights, and – as my parents realized I really liked this stuff – many other children’s books describing life in earlier times and many different places. For much of my childhood, the most recent time I wanted to read about was the American West in the nineteenth century. I gradually found books I could read about ancient civilizations and parts of the world I knew nothing about.
With a friend from school wh
