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Rating: 
Summary: One of my favourite Osprey books
Review: Angus McBride must be the most prolific artist working for Osprey. His illustrations cover almost every other period on every continent that you can think of. His drawings range from the sublime to the atrocious due I suspect to his prolific output.
I am not a McBride fan but rate this particular book highly because I think that his scythian drawings are truly McBride at his best, even surpassing his work on the zulus and vikings.
Rating:
Summary: Nomadic warriors
Review: I own this book, and have found it useful in designing loose-fit
ting, comfortable nomadic, Scythian-style garments. If one takes the time to carefully examine the pictures, reconstuction
pictures, etc., one could use them to reconstruct either arms or
clothing, as a living history study. Keep in mind, they traded
actively with the Greeks, and from the other end of the Silk Ro-
ad, China, and artisans fashioned jewelry and armor to reflect
those tastes. Most famously, the golden helmets, greaves, and
pectoral jewelry.Excellent layout on the compound bow a real plus, as are draw-
ings of grave goods, used by both male and female warriors. Yes, Virginia, there really were Amazons, and they kicked some
serious butt. Excellent intro to making your own Scythian-style armaments and
clothing. Cover picture alone is worth the price of the book.
Rating:
Summary: Nomadic warriors
Review: I own this book, and have found it useful in designing loose-fit
ting, comfortable nomadic, Scythian-style garments. If one takes the time to carefully examine the pictures, reconstuction
pictures, etc., one could use them to reconstruct either arms or
clothing, as a living history study. Keep in mind, they traded
actively with the Greeks, and from the other end of the Silk Ro-
ad, China, and artisans fashioned jewelry and armor to reflect
those tastes. Most famously, the golden helmets, greaves, and
pectoral jewelry. Excellent layout on the compound bow a real plus, as are draw-
ings of grave goods, used by both male and female warriors. Yes, Virginia, there really were Amazons, and they kicked some
serious butt. Excellent intro to making your own Scythian-style armaments and
clothing. Cover picture alone is worth the price of the book.
Rating: 
Summary: DISAPOINTING
Review: Let me begin by commending the author for his detailed accounts of Scythian weaponry. For aside from this and the art-work,this book seriously fails as an academic peice of writing. To begin with the author relies on Herodotus as one of his principle sources...a writer who is renowned for being as much of a romantic as a factual historian. Secondly, the author himself incorprates such personal admiration for these people into the text, that it degrades form its legitimacy. Yet what struck me as most bizarre, is that in the scanty single page introduction, the author mentions the term 'Greek' 7 times (for one reason or another), without ever explaining the racial background, and tribal divisions of the Scythians. For anyone who has already purchased this book, i draw your attention to page 29. Recall the sentence "After driving back Darius with shame," anyone who is remotley familiar with the fundamentals of culture will attest as to just how ridicoulosly out of place such terminology is in a scholarly text.
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