Talk:Shadows in the Desert: Ancient Persia at War/Archive 4

Reception
This section starts 'seems to have been well received by scholars', and references a Robert Gibbs, who I can find as a benefactor of WAIS, but who is he? This guy? ? Anyone know? I can't find any academic reviews that aren't from the publisher or the introduction of the book, which we wouldn't normally call a review, would we? Doug Weller (talk) 10:37, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
 * the article had obviously tried to confer undue hype upon the book. This is the fault of Wikipedia, not Farrokh. It appears that this is, after all, a bona fide book on its topic, the randomhouse link shows that it was received favourably.
 * the background of this is, however, that Farrokh is about 30 years too late to contribute anything groundbreaking. There was indeed an "Alexander Mystique" in academic views of ancient Persia, but this has been fully dispelled in the 1970s to 1980s. It is just left to impress this on the general public, who may or may not have heard of Persia in the first place. Anyone at all interested in ancient Greece and Persia could have done away with "the Western standpoint rooted in Greece" ever since Walter Burkert's 1984  The Orientalizing Revolution at the latest. Thus, Farrokh is not really stating anything controversial, he is just pretending that he is, so that he can pose as a great dispeller of an entrenched academic Eurocentrism that has in reality been done away with a generation ago. --dab (𒁳) 10:48, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree it's been received favorably, I am uncertain still about the start of the section. Doug Weller (talk) 11:05, 20 September 2008 (UTC)