Albert Ten Eyck Olmstead (1880-1945) was an American historian and author. His works include Assyrian Historiography (1916) and History of Assyria (1923). "To the serious student of Assyrian history, it is obvious that we cannot write that history until we have adequately discussed the sources. We must learn what these are, in other words, we must begin with a bibliography of the various documents. Then we must divide them into their various classes, for different classes of inscriptions are of varying degrees of accuracy. Finally, we must study in detail for each reign the sources, discover which of the various documents or groups of documents are the most nearly contemporaneous with the events they narrate, and on these, and on these alone, base our history of the period." --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.