acommonreader.st
The Landmark Arrian: The Campaigns of Alexander Edited by James Romm, Series Editor Robert B. Strassler, Translation by Pamela Mensch, Introduction by Paul CartledgeIf you haven’t noticed by now, I am a huge fan of the Landmark series, created by Robert B. Strassler. If you haven’t picked up a volume in the series, check out […]
Though I have myself had occasion to find fault with some of Alexander’s deeds in the course of my history of them, I am not ashamed to admire Alexander himself. If I have condemned certain acts of his, I did so out of my own regard for truth and also for the benefit of mankind. […]
Anyone who reproaches Alexander should not simply cite those deeds that deserve to be reproached. Instead, after collecting in one place all of Alexander’s qualities, let his critic then consider who he is and what sort of fortune he has had that he reproaches Alexander, a man who became so great and attained such a […]
”I was now going to send back those of you who are unfit for war, to be envied by those at home. But since you all wish to go, be gone, all of you, and report, when you get home, that Alexander, your king, who conquered the Persians, Medes, Bactrians, and Sacae, who subjugated the […]
Alexander’s return from IndiaIn an attempt to get back on track with Arrian and the Reading Odyssey book group I’ll do a post for Book Six on Arrian’s The Campaigns of Alexander. With so much material, one post obviously won’t cover everything but I’ll highlight a few things I found interesting. The first topic occurs […]
Ghost on the Throne: The Death of Alexander the Great and the War for Crown and Empire by James Romm Knopf, 341 pp., $28.95 This book covers in gripping detail the events that began on June 1, 323 B.C., when Alexander the Great became ill with what would be a fatal fever, and ended seven […]
Thanks again to The Neglected Books Page for last year’s mention of the release of two of William Gaddis’ works, J R and The Recognitions, on audiobook. I have just started listening to J R and I’m captivated by Nick Sullivan’s performance. Oh yes, the book, too. I can’t recommend both of these performances by […]
In the colonists’ use of classical literature, for example, “their detailed knowledge and engaged interest covered only one era and one small group of writers”: Plutarch, Livy, Cicero, Sallust, and Tacitus—those who “had hated and feared the trends of their own time, and in their writing had contrasted the present with a better past, which […]
I saw the unflinching force of the idea of public good, born in my country. I saw it first in the universal collectivization. I saw it in [the purges of] 1937. I saw how, in the name of an ideal as beautiful and humane as that of Christianity, people were annihilated. I have seen villages […]
But an invisible force was crushing him. He could feel its weight, its hypnotic power; it was forcing him to think as it wanted, to write as it dictated. This force was inside him; it could dissolve his will and cause his heart to stop beating; it came between him and his family; it insinuated […]
I mentioned it in earlier posts so hopefully you downloaded the podcasts of Life and Fate from the BBC site before they were deleted last week. My reaction to their production is similar to the reaction I had with the book—a few minor quibbles but extremely impressed with what was accomplished. How do you turn […]
How was this possible? The Germans knew about these troop movements. It would have been no more possible to hide them than to hide the wind from a man walking through the steppe. Any German lieutenant, looking at a map with approximate positions for the main concentrations of Russian forces, could have guessed the most […]
I just realized I had not mentioned I was using the New York Review Books edition of this book with translation by Robert Chandler. For good summaries and analyses on Vasily Grossman and Life and Fate, I highly recommend the links in this post—I’m slowly working my way through them and they capture a lot […]
Continuing with some of the lesser points in Life and Fate…see my links post for Vasily Grossman and Life and Fate for reviews that cover both very well. Many of the links in that post mention Grossman’s love for Anton Chekov’s work and some similarity in style. Several authors are mentioned in Life and Fate, […]
Scanning through the links I posted on Vasily Grossman and his book Life and Fate I see the reviews do an extremely good job summarizing the book and covering his life. Instead of restating the same points I’ll post on a few topics in the book most of those reviews did not cover (probably for […]
The Europe of Vasily Grossman, the founder of a second tradition of comparison, was one in which the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were at war. Grossman, a fiction writer who became a Soviet war correspondent, saw many of the important battles on the eastern front, and evidence of all of the major German (and […]
In the Crito Socrates repeatedly refers to doing what is right as compared to doing what is expedient or what will placate others. The point he arrives at in his reasoning for following the laws provides an early example of a social contract, but he deliberately avoids examining possible conflicts (such as a concern he […]