Don't Know Much About® Mythology: Everything You Need to Know About the Greatest Stories in Human History but Never Learned (Don't Know Much About Series)

Want to learn more about that silly fantasy movie you just watched? This us your answer book. Well written and informative.

Purchased for a college class. The book came in great condition!

I must admit, this is the kind of book that was written precisely for people like me with limited knowledge of mythology stemming from a book or two I'd read as a child, e.g. "The 12 Labors of Hercules", and a few movies I've watched, e.g. Troy, which hardly qualify as sources on the subject.After reading over 500 pages, I've gained more knowledge about the history of ancient civilizations than their myths. Thankfully, I realized that a dozen or more Gods worshipped by the Egyptians, Greeks, Mesopotamians et al. interested me less than their way of life. Kenneth Davis, through no fault of his own wrote more about these ancient civilizations and their rich cultural histories than their Gods and myths. Davis had to lay the foundation by which stories of creationism and heroes developed. Increasingly, I found myself browsing rather than reading the pages where various Gods were meticulously categorized.As far as coverage, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Greece received the lion's share, and deservedly so as compared to Chinese, Japanese, African and especially Pacific Islander civilizations. Nevertheless, Mr. Davis masterfully provides a starting point for mythically challenged people like me to explore Gods and stories of various civilizations.The main take away from this book for me was how religion and religious customs developed, and the depth to which various religions borrowed and adopted ideas to make themselves whole.While "Don't Know Much About Mythology" provides the lay person with adequate information on myths that dominated numerous cultures over time, there are undoubtedly countless other books that are better suited to tackle this subject in a more comprehensive manner.

What I found perhaps the most valuable about this book was Davis' explanation of the differences between myths, legends, fables and folktales. In the Introduction and Chapter One, Davis explores the concepts of story-making and storytelling in human history, which have evolved with language and culture to help shape our worldviews today through imprinted backstories that range from the obviously fantastic to contemporary religion. Understanding these concepts can help us to understand our own actions as well as those of other cultures. Although his descriptions are brief, they do provide a good jumping-off point for further study.Beginning with Chapter Two, Davis is off to the races, providing in-depth descriptions and analysis of mythologies, from ancient Egypt to Mesopotamia to the Greeks and Romans, and onward through the Western traditions; crossing over to India and the other Eastern traditions, and then Africa, but running out of steam, it seemed, with aboriginal-American mythology and the traditions of Polynesia, fetching up at last in just a few short pages with aboriginal Australia. The book is also bulky in places, with introductory pages in each chapter, much of which is repeated later in lists of mythological gods and personalities. This converts the book specifically into a reference as opposed to a book that can be read comfortably from cover to cover.Nevertheless the book remains a good place to chart further study, with its outline format, lengthy timelines, and historical vignettes.

Book is amazing been building up my mythology collection for a while and a quick glance through it has already told me that its a must have for people in mythology or just other cultures in general, the condition for the price was great, although I was contacted by them saying the condition had to be down graded due to shelf wear it was barely noticeable and wasn’t even a problem, glad they went the extra there first people on Amazon todo something like that for me, 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

Great book. My son enjoyed it. He is very interested in the mythologies of diverse cultures.

Good for a high school paper but would be no better than internet search otherwise.

I loved this book! It's very interesting and the author put in a lot of effort to make the information accessible. That is, it's a very academic book but it reads like a novel. I learned a lot and want to continue reading his other books. My only criticism is that the chapters on non-Western civilizations, especially Africa and the Americas, are a lot shorter and less detailed than the others. I'm not sure if that is because of the author's bias or if these culture's mythologies are less well-documented. I was disappointed with those chapters but overall the book is an excellent read for anyone interested in history, sociology and/or religion.

very good.

Purchased for my Grandson​, he's going to love it!!!