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Nemesis: Alcibiades and the Fall of Ancient Athens by David StuttardHarvard University Press: April 2018Hardcover, 400 pages From the inside book flap: Alcibiades was one of the most dazzling figures of the Golden Age of Athens. A ward of Pericles and a friend of Socrates, he was spectacularly rich, bewitchingly handsome and charismatic, a skilled […]
Carpenter’s Gothic by William Gaddis Narrated by Nick Sullivan Published by Tantor Audio Running time 9 hrs 34 minsA few years back I posted a brief note on Nick Sullivan’s narration of two of William Gaddis’ novels. Mr. Sullivan was kind enough to email me that his narration of Gaddis’ Carpenter’s Gothic had just been […]
On Grand Strategy by John Lewis GaddisNew York: Penguin Press, 2018 John Lewis Gaddis is the Robert A. Lovett Professor of Military & Naval History at Yale University. He is best known as an author specializing in the Cold War and grand strategy (six of the ten books shown at his faculty page have “Cold […]
I finally got to see this version of Hamlet, the 2015 filming of National Theatre Live‘s production starring Benedict Cumberbatch in the title role. I had intended to see it twice before, but I had been unable to attend either time (even after buying tickets to one of them). I had a strong sense of […]
A few years ago, the boys and I read Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Eagle of the Ninth, a historical fiction book that looks at the “disappearance” of the Roman Ninth Legion (Legio IX Hispana) from Britain in the second century AD. While we enjoyed the book (and the 2011 movie version, The Eagle), we also looked […]
I received word that David Womack, a true mentor and influence on my life, passed away on July 11, 2018. For someone that had such a huge, giving heart, it’s a sad irony that it was that physical organ that failed him. For a few semesters when I was in college, I lived at his […]