Compiled by Emma Bridges, Edith Hall, and P. J. Rhodes, the book explores the significance of the ancient wars that first gave rise to the conceptual division between Western and Eastern cultures and spans a very wide range of literary genres and artistic media, from highbrow philosophy to popular fiction and cinema and includes 40 specially chosen illustrations

The 500-page book addresses the huge impact on subsequent culture made by the wars fought between ancient Persia and Greece in the early fifth century BCE.

It brings together sixteen interdisciplinary essays, mostly by classical scholars, on individual trends within the reception of this period of history, extending from the wars' immediate impact on ancient Greek history to their reception in literature and thought both in antiquity and in the post-Renaissance world.

Extensively illustrated and accessibly written, with a detailed introduction and bibliographies, this book will interest historians, classicists, and students of both comparative and modern literatures.

However, impartiality, objectiveness or biasness of the book remains to be seen. The biasness of the classical writers towards their arch enemy, the ancient Iranians is of common knowledge. History of Ancient Iran, by many modern historians in the West, due to their political agendas, prejudiceism, envy or ignorance, still tends to be seen through Greek eyes. If this book is written impartially, it could become an asset for Greco-Persian studies, but if it is gathered in the form of political rambles in a nicely wrapped critique, and maintains the vicious circle of "historical distortions", it therefore has nothing new to offer, and perhaps it could become a script for Oliver Stone's next movie.