Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West

In 480 BC. Xerxes. the King of Persia. led an invasion of mainland Greece Its success should have been a formality For seventy years. victory - rapid. spectacular. victory -. had seemed the birth right of the Persian Empire In the space of a single generation. they had swept across the Near East. shattering ancient kingdoms. storming famous cities. putting together an empire which stretched from India to the shores of the Aegean As a result of those. conquests. Xerxes ruled as the most powerful man on the planet. Yet somehow. astonishingly. against the largest expeditionary force ever assembled. the Greeks of the mainland managed to hold out. The Persians were turned back. Greece remained free. Had the Greeks been defeated at Salamis. not only would the West have lost its first struggle for independence a...