此书观点陈旧，存在硬伤

Let’s Abandon Achaemenid Studies (Part 2)

Jona Lendering

Tom Holland must be praised for trying to break with the Greece-centeredness that is so customary in books of ancient history. And Persian Fire. The First World Empire and the Battle for the West (2005) is not bad. Still, it leaves too much to be desired. The main problem is, again, ignorance of the achievements of modern scholarship. [...] Most of the time, Holland does not rise above this nineteenth-century level: he is too faithful to Herodotus, unaware of new insights, and thinks that a counterfactual interpretation is permissible. When he does bring something new, like the idea that the Persian War was decided by an insurrection in Babylon, he has no grip on the complexity of the problems. Persian Fire might as well have been written in 1875. Still, it would be exaggerated to call this a bad book, although it isn’t a good book either. The book is unnecessary.

http://www.livius.org/opinion/opinion0013.html