Philologists specializing in Old Assyrian cuneiform studies tend to make a distinction between “old” and “new” tablets. The difference between the two has nothing to do with the age of the documents themselves, but rather pertains to when and by whom they were discovered. Prior to the first sanctioned excavations at Kültepe (ancient Kaneš) in 1948 (led by Bedřich Hrozný), illegally obtained tablets from this site had already entered the antiquity market. These texts, with their archaeological context forever lost, are generally called “old tablets” and the excavated ones “new.” It appears to be pure coincidence that many of the illegally collected tablets contain information regarding some of the most important Assyrian traders that lived within the small colony of merchants (kārum) at Kaneš. As a result, some work has been done over the years to reconstruct these archives, with monographs appearing on persons such as Pūšu-kēn, Imdīlum, Aššur-nāda, Innāya son of Elāli, and Innāya son of Amurāya. One may say that Stratford's monograph belongs to this tradition; however, it takes a slightly different approach: rather than concentrating on one complete archive or one merchant, Stratford attempts in his study to reconstruct from the documentation of a larger archive the events of one particular year, which he labels quite spectacularly “the year of vengeance.”“The year of vengeance” according to the author can be summarized as follows: in the year 1891 BCE a transporter called Ilabrat-bāni took 61/3 minas from the tin he had been transporting in order to pay certain exceptionally high expenses incurred during his journey. Such expenses were to be covered with the money provided to the transporters specifically for this purpose. The owner of the transported tin, Šalim-aḫum, therefore took offense and made it a personal matter. Later that year, he instructed his agents to seize a caravan led by Ilabrat-bāni's son in Syria and sell the merchandise on the spot in order to recoup most of the value of tin owed to him by Ilabrat-bāni. In doing so, Šalim-aḫum took his revenge by spoiling one of the business enterprises of Ilabrat-bāni. One may argue that the term “year of vengeance” is an exaggeration of the actual events that took place, particularly as they affected only a tiny portion of Assyrian society and ended without violence (unlike what the title implies); even Stratford terms it an “anecdote” (7) in his introduction. He goes on to assure the reader that the interactions between different traders not directly involved elevates this conflict into an interconnected set of events that can be reconstructed chronologically to a degree that is unique for the Old Assyrian period.The Kültepe tablets used the system of eponyms (Akkadian līmum) to name years. Contemporary lists containing the eponyms in order have been found, and so we can be certain of their sequence. Unfortunately, only some legal documents were regularly dated, which makes the chronological reconstruction of a set of events rather subject to one's own interpretation. Stratford's main accomplishment is to have established a plausible chronological chain of events, from texts that do not contain dates. The events are presented as a narrative, and each is introduced in chronological order through the various chapters. The depth of the reconstruction is impressive; however, as a set of interconnected events the book must be read in its entirety and is therefore not structured as a reference work, despite the discussion of many interesting topics. Šalim-aḫum himself resided in Aššur, not Kaneš, so his own personal archives were lost. This means that all the information concerning the year of vengeance derives from the archives of other merchants found in Kültepe, in particular the archive of Pūšu-kēn. Stratford announces a plan for a second volume, which will present 144 tablets from the large Pūšu-kēn archive (covering the year 1891 BCE). The text-reference numbers of tablets to appear in Volume 2 are applied consistently in this monograph, though fortunately always in combination with references to their original publications.In addition to the reconstruction of this particular set of chronological events, the monograph covers the methods of transport and communication between traders in Aššur and Anatolia. This is one of the aspects of the book that has broader appeal, as it deals with important aspects of trade that hitherto have been less well understood: the practicalities of communication and travel between Anatolia and Assyria. An understanding of these topics is necessary, as Stratford's reconstruction of the year of vengeance relies on different actors physically traveling back and forth, with additional communication through letters sent with other caravans. As Šalim-aḫum remained in Aššur during the events, and Ilabrat-bāni resided in Anatolia, interaction between the two was through their agents. Chapter 9 deals with the season of nabrītum; usually understood to refer to the colder period of the year when the mountains separating Anatolia and Mesopotamia became inaccessible for caravans and communications were cut until spring. In his discussion of the term and its textual references however, Stratford quickly arrives at a more nuanced definition of the term, by demonstrating that nabrītum is a period of disruption in trade, whether caused by snow or other non-seasonal elements such as war, bandits, or embargos.In Chapter 10 Stratford argues for a faster traveling pace for caravans, with an estimate of 30 days rather than the previously assumed 50 days. He also argues that a one-way journey in either direction could perhaps be taken as many as six times each year, contradicting the general consensus that only four one-way trips would have been possible. Even if few people would actually undertake the journey six times a year, it nevertheless shows us that individual journeys could be taken in quicker succession than previously thought. Several tactics are mentioned as being used to increase the speed of travel, such as overexploiting the donkeys of the caravan, which resulted in a high mortality rate, evidenced by the usual 100% replacement of the animals for each journey, commonly by selling them along with the merchandise they carried. Another tactic that may have been applied was overnight travel, not allowing for a full night's sleep at a local inn or road station.Chapter 11 deals with the intensity of contact between Aššur and Anatolia. For the two main actors in the archive, Pūšu-kēn and Šalim-aḫum, Stratford estimates their correspondence during the year of vengeance to have surpassed 100 letters. Clearly it cost traders little effort to have a letter written and dispatched. That the fees of the “postal services” were likewise negligible is further illustrated by letters wherein Assyrians bother each other concerning tiny debts of a few shekels of silver. Similarly, it is also clear from the correspondence during the year of vengeance that Šalim-aḫum impatiently wrote five letters in a row when a reply did not arrive in a timely manner. This indicates how fast communication must have been, since there would be scant reason to press a matter with five consecutive letters if it took a month or longer for a letter to reach its destination. In order to allow for these fast communications, Stratford discusses the possibility of travel via horses for the purpose of sending letters. References to the Akkadian word for horse, sisium, are rare in the Old Assyrian corpus, although this problem may be solved by reinterpreting the references to the Assyrian word perdum as referring to horses.The third part of the monograph is more concerned with the archival contexts of the documents relating to the year of vengeance and with various matters concerning the main actors during this period. One of the more interesting topics touched upon is the estimation of age for the main participants in the narrative, as discussed in Chapter 12. According to Stratford, a couple of actors in this dossier had reached their sixties (including Šalim-aḫum), at a time during which male life expectancy could reach 75 (189). This is actually surprisingly high considering that research upon human bones found in Kültepe present an image of a population with many health problems, as might be expected in this period. Osteological data show only a few people over the age of 50. Arguably, the senior population discussed in this book belonged to the elite population living in Aššur, and the discrepancy between the health of these elites and that of the actual merchants may be large. Concerning the mortality of the traders, Chapter 16 describes how a plague killed a large number of traders just in this particular year. One side effect of these deaths was that many houses became available on the otherwise difficult estate market of Aššur. Pūšu-kēn was in the business of buying some of these properties as investments, and Šalim-aḫum helped him with this endeavor (Ch. 13).The fourth and final part of the book deals with the volume of the trade (Ch. 18) and the large quantity of tablets relating to the year of vengeance in the Pūšu-kēn archive (Ch. 19). The year of vengeance accounts for nearly a third (29% confirmed, but up to 40% of the documents may relate to 1891 BCE) of the archive, one of the first documented years of trade in Kaneš. In this chapter Stratford discusses how archives, as they come to us, are not representative of the actual number of documents that existed in the Old Assyrian period before texts were discarded or lost by chance. It is furthermore suggested that documents concerning the year of vengeance were stored separately, probably in a single pot or bowls, as a closed dossier. Nevertheless, even for this particular year, the documentation of Pūšu-kēn's archive is unlikely to contain everything written about the matter in antiquity.In assessing the overall contribution of this monograph to the field of Assyriology, I found the book is well written and well researched. Stratford touches upon a myriad of subjects rarely studied, and his insights are refreshing and innovative. The book may suffer from the fact that it tries to cover too many topics while attempting to fit them in an unified narrative, with the reconstruction of events recorded in the Pūšu-kēn archive alternating with discussion on transport, speed of communication, and the off-peak trading season, to name a few. This does not, however, detract from the overall quality of the monograph and the author is to be congratulated for his fine work. It is hoped that the promised second volume will appear soon.