How can a nation's archaeological treasures help explain its history, especially one as richly complex as Syria's? Ross Burns chooses 40 among Syria's outstanding range of sites to take the reader through the tangled paths of this crossroads of the eastern Mediterranean where numerous world cultures intersected.

Given the last 12 years of savage conflict, the author reports too on the plight of many of these monuments, addressing the common but unhelpful assumption that much of the country's archaeological treasures have been 'destroyed'. A better approach is to recognise that Syria's heritage can play a role in the country's recovery and cannot simply be declared a write-off.

This is a history which tells us much about how Syria's mixture of traditions defy simplistic categorisation through modern definitions of cultures and identities.