Three books on the Achaemenids (all bad)

[Jona Lendering]

At this moment, many works for a large audience are written by half-scholars like myself, ...

Er ... why is that bad?! :?

Because we do not see all complications. In my book on Alexander I misdated Zarathustra, believing that I had quoted the most recent literature on the subject; in fact, I had, but I did not know how the book had been received among Iranologists. No specialist would have made that mistake (which, I am glad to say, I could correct in the third impression).

I think that under the present circumstances, now that too many scholars are ignoring the larger audience, there is a lot of work to do for authors writing for the general reader. Those authors do their best, and some/many books are not bad. But in an ideal world, the universities take their responsibility.