Reddit reviews Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization

I'll straight up recommend Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization. I'm personally about 80% through the book, and so far it's FANTASTIC. It details Carthage from the extreme beginnings (Tyre and the Phoenicians) to the end (The razing of the city by Scipio Africanus.) Most of our sources aren't primary, unfortunately - we have many sources (Livy, Polybius, etc) who have their own sources which are, unfortunately, lost to history. However, their sources (if you read between the lines - Polybius especially is incredibly biased in favour of Rome) are considered to be reasonably accurate, so that helps.

Our other sources of information on Carthage are mainly archaeological - we've found the ancient ruins of Carthage (including the MASSIVE seam of ash from the ending of the city), the slag heaps from their mining operations in Spain, their pottery all over the Mediterranean, artifacts in North Africa, etc. Again, I DO highly recommend that book - it's very well researched, and while it's a bit dry, it's very good.

So I did an episode on my podcast about the Carthaginians, and while I didn't talk a lot about their government, I read a fair bit about it in the book Carthage Must Be Destroyed.

As far as their government goes, the Roman authors called it a "Senate" though it wasn't really "Senate" in the Roman sense. The Carthaginians themselves called it a Council of Elders, and while money was a factor, I believe having a pedigreed family name was also key. I suspect they didn't just let in any old Joe whose net worth was above a certain line.

It's also important to note that Carthage also had a Popular Assembly too. Before the Second Punic War, it was the Popular Assembly that supported the Hannibal's shenanigans in Spain.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004IYJEB0/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

I thought this was a pretty awesome book on a little known topic. Like OP says Carthage is usually talked about in contrast to Roman expansion and we tend to still view* them through this lens. This book tries to look at the history of a really interesting culture on its own merits.

Edit: thanks autocorrect

Two history books I've read recently that really knocked my socks off:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Plantagenets-Warrior-Queens-England/dp/0670026654

The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England by Dan Jones

http://www.amazon.com/Carthage-Must-Be-Destroyed-Civilization-ebook/dp/B004IYJEB0/

Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization by Richard Miles

A recent history book I'm dying to read is this:

http://www.amazon.com/Invisible-Bridge-Fall-Nixon-Reagan-ebook/dp/B00HXGD5CE/

The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan by Rick Perlstein

He wrote the book Nixonland which I absolutely loved. If you want to understand modern American politics you need to understand that Nixon defined it in many ways.