I am currently reading about the Ancient Near East and I am interested in the Achaemenid and Sassanian empires. Which are in your opinion the best, in-depth and most upt-to-date books on both of these empires?
Thanks u/OldPersonName for tagging me in here. I've written quite a few responses on some version of this question before:
If you're looking for a good intro and/or overview of the Achaemenid dynasty, then Matt Waters' Ancient Persia: A Concise History of the Achaemenid Empire is the go-to suggestion.
The Persians by Maria Brosius is an overview of the 3 "Persian" empires (Achaemenid, Parthian, and Sassanid) - this is pretty high level but probably the easiest way to find an introductory overview to the Parthians and Sassanids (I don't think there's a book like Matt Waters' written for those other two).
If you want deeper, well the answer is Pierre Briant's epic work on the Achaemenid Empire From Cyrus to Alexander, from the 90s. Surely there's something newer, you ask! Someone else asked recently and received this good explanation from u/Trevor_Culley on its status and potential successors (and there's probably a recommendation in there you may want to look at!)
Quick tip, From Cyrus... is an expensive behemoth (though i see it at 135 dollars on Amazon which is honestly not bad for something like this). There's no kindle but the ebook is available on google books for less than 40 bucks! https://books.google.com/books?id=lxQ9W6F1oSYC&newbks=0&hl=en
I was not successful in getting it on Kindle because of DRM reasons (I tried the instructions you find online for removing drm and using calibre, no luck) so be aware you'll want to make sure you can actually read it on a suitable device.