THE GREAT SEA A Human History of the Mediterranean

Abulafia’s information-packed book on the Mediterranean concentrates on the political, economic, and military interrelations of the nations surrounding the sea. Jason Culp has a clear, well-cultured voice. He reads crisply at a good pace, but at times, it seems, without comprehension so that his patterns of stress and intonation don’t help understanding or are even misleading. His foreign phrases are mostly garbled or incomprehensible, and in a text laden with the names of places, nations, leaders, etc., his pronunciations of words such as “Etruscan,” “Braudel,” “Rhone,” “Azores,” “vizier,” “cognate,” “execrably” are frequently wrong. This reading will mislead those who don’t know better and irritate those who do. W.M. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine [Published: NOVEMBER 2012]