A fine and detailed, if slightly tedious overview of Celtic history. I liked how careful the author is, the book is free of romanticization or speculation. It's also quite thorough, I feel like I've had an advanced undergraduate class in Celtic history. I just wish the author were a bit more of a storyteller and less of a scholar.

The first part of the book is particularly slow in part because the historic record is so thin. What a shame and surprise; you'd think given the wide range of the Celtic peoples there'd be a lot more archaeological evidence. But between the way stuff tends to get built on top of older stuff and the almost non-existent Celtic written record, there's just not a lot to go on.

The book picks up significantly once they enter the period of conflict with Rome, particularly Caesar's conquest. Entirely from Caesar's point of view, of course, it helps he wrote a whole book explaining his military campaign. Cunliffe does an excellent job taking us through that book and aligning the story to other historic evidence.

What I was really hoping was for more information on Celtic culture. What was life like? There's a lot written about the possible of matriarchal power; is that all fantasy or is it real? What was the religion like? But the author is very careful not to speculate and apparently we just lack for hard evidence. He does talk about what he can, particularly from evidence of burials, but it's just not a complete picture.

Definitely recommend if you want a broad overview of the Celts. I'm still astonished there was a culture that spanned most of Western Europe before the Romans.