Accompanying the major BBC TV series, Richard Miles` ” Ancient Worlds” tells the epic story of civilization, & the cities that made us who we are. The path of human progress is one of enlightenment & cruelty, achievement & bloodshed, creation & destruction. Here Richard Miles reaches back into our distant past to bring alive its most glorious & terrible people & places: from the first ever city in Mesopotamia to the death cults of Egypt, from the Phoenician seafarers who invented the alphabet to the brutal Assyrian empire, & on to the great city-states of Athens & Rome. By choosing to live together with strangers in vast urban settings, Miles shows, humans harnessed the very best & the worst of ourselves, setting civilization in motion & forging the modern world. ” Epic & compelling”. (” Daily Mail”). ” An epic, spanning five millennia & half the globe”. (” Daily Telegraph”). ” Engaging.. .full of interesting things about the radical social experiment of the city-state, & the new ways of living it permitted”. (” Independent”). ”” Ancient Worlds” really does put flesh on the bones of history & Richard Miles brings long lost cities to life”. (” Observer”). Richard Miles is the author of ” Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise & Fall of an Ancient Civilization”. A six-part TV series of ” Ancient Worlds” was broadcast on BBC2 in 2011. He teaches classics at the University of Sydney & was previously a Newton Trust Lecturer in the Faculty of Classics & Fellow & Director of Studies at Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge.