History book advice

[Conqueror]

(Hopefully this isn't considered double-posting.) I asked about books in the Monastery and Big John adviced me to present my question here too. So here goes... Do you think the following books are good for a layman to read?

Barry Cunliffe: Iron Age Britain
Peter Harbison: Pre-Christian Ireland: From the First Settlers to the Early Celts
Hornblower & Spawforth: The Oxford Companion to Classical Civilization
Rene Grousset: Empire of the Steppes
J.E. Curtis: Forgotten Empire: The World of Ancient Persia
George Rawlinson: Phoenicia: History of a Civilization
H. G. Rawlinson: Bactria, The History Of A Forgotten Empire
Romila Thapar: Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300

Recommendations on other titles covering the same subjects are welcome too. Preferably not very expensive ones though.

[VandalCarthage]

As far as Bactrian history goes, I'd recommend some serious consideration to how you want to approach the issue. The whole of Bactrian and Indo-Greek history is best treated by A.K. Narain, as it deals with theory in-relation to the works of men like Rawlinson, and more importantly Tarn. So, if you're just starting in on the subject, I recommend either Holt's "Thundering Zeus: The Making of Hellenistic Bactria" or Tarn's "The Greeks in Bactria and India" as excellent starting material (moving on to Narain's "The Indo-Greeks," and perhaps others if your interest hasn't waned). If you've already read either of those, Rawlinson is a fun suppliment to have; he's a member of that fairly broad group of much older historians who treated the subject, but no longer have widely circulated works in publication, which are all the more cool to have for that reason ~;)