Great Cities of the Ancient World, by L. Sprague de Camp, if you can find it.
By the same author: The Ancient Engineers and Ancient Ruins and Archaeology (alternate title: Citadels of Mystery). Surprisingly not-dry, given the titles and topics.
Mary Renault wrote eight classic novels about ancient Greece, set in periods from the legendary age of Theseus to the succession wars following the death of Alexander. You’ll have a much better cultural context to understand Plato’s dialogues (and “Greek love” 
) after reading The Last of the Wine.
L. Sprague de Camp also wrote several historical novels set in classical Greece and in Persia of the same period: The Dragon of the Ishtar Gate, The Bronze God of Rhodes, The Arrows of Hercules, An Elephant for Aristotle, and The Golden Wind. Fun, lively reads, every one!
Harry Turtledove, better known for his alternate-history novels, also has written (under the pen-name of “H.N. Turteltaub”) four straight historical novels set in Hellenistic Greece, and one about the Byzantine Emperor Justinian II. (No, not the one who built Hagia Sophia; the later one, who got his nose cut off.)
Recent nonfiction about ancient Greece: Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea, by Thomas Cahill.
I second Pompei. It is incredibly accurate. I just finished Archangel and it was absolutely awesome!
Yay. I get to contribute a selection or two that haven’t been listed…
- In Search Of Alexander* by Robin L. Fox; wonderfully illustrated with color plates and very interesting read.
Although ostensibly written for children, an interesting set (though long out of print) might be the two volume The Orient and The Occident by Richard Halliburton, in which he bankrolls travels around the world in the 1930’s by writing short stories, probably the original travel-adventure writer.
“The Source,” by James Michener. Israel from prehistoric times to the present day.
Gore Vidal? Hey, Live from Golgotha is really something. A TV crew travels in time and gets the Crucifixion on tape. No doubt that old iconoclastic Gore had lots of fun writing that. And I mean lots.
Speaking of James Michener, I read his “Hawaii” at the time I was moving to Hawaii. Great stuff. From the Polynesian voyagers to present day. Odd, but I remember he made three mistakes in the book concerning Hawaii, and I know that Michenere wa SO familiar with the state that one of them had to have been made on purpose for purposes of a cheap joke. I can’t believe he could have made it by accident, it was so basic.
Care to enlighten us??
The famous Japanese-American unit from Hawaii that fought in Europe was the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. They were still holding regular get-togethers when I lived in Hawaii, highly renowned. In the book, Michener renamed it the 222nd. He did not rename anything else in this big book, and he knew Hawaii too well to make that kind of error. The only thing I could figure is that he did it on purpose for a cheap joke. In the book, he had the white soldiers ask the Japanese ones which unit they were with, and when they answered the “two two two,” the white soldiers would crack up like the Japanese were making train sounds, which is why the white soldiers asked them in the first place.
He also had the Polynesians reaching Hawaii in about AD 800, which I believe is correct, but he said that if they had gone east, they would have encountered the Aztecs in what is now Mexico. The Aztecs would not have been there for another 600 years.
There was a third error, too, but I can’t remember what it was.
I heartily recommend a pair of books by Nicholas Guild: The Assyrian and The Blood Star. The first of these can be picked up in most any paperback bookstore. The second (for reasons that totally escape me) never made it out of hardcover and you’re only likely to find it in a library. If anyone has a spare copy of The Blood Star, btw, please drop me a note.