Stonehenge dates its Bronze Age phase to 2000 B.C. (but with a history stretching back yet another thousand years to Neolithic times). It attracts more than a million tourists a year, but is more than an array of great standing stones. Stonehenge was indeed its own city, the metropolitan center of a powerful kingdom heretofore unsuspected.

That city is reconstructed by the author from the archaeological evidence--royal palace, banquet hall and tomb, among other buildings. Here (apart from Homer) begins European literature, derived from oral traditions. The entire book is richly illustrated.