This is one of the most engaging history books I've ever read. The authors concentrate only on the facts and occurrences which really matter; the book was rarely boring. And it still manages to supply a sufficient amount of information. The only negative I perceived was that with the way the book is organized, with each chapter focusing on a different person, rather than period, was that it was disjointed, and virtually impossible to follow the big picture, the "story", if you will. However, this detracts very little from the book, which is an excellent source if you are interested in going in-depth on specific people, this book provides overviews for about 30 different people.