The Scythian Empire by Christopher Beckwith Princeton University Press, 416 pages, £35
This latest book by Christopher Beckwith rides out to rectify popular perceptions of the “earliest historical central Eurasian steppe people” – the Scythians, whom he presents from start to finish as a unified and coherent community. For Beckwith, Scythian society was not only capable of great things, but was actually responsible for the “cultural flowering” of the Classical Age (from around the eighth century BC to the fifth century AD).