Back then, before the Great War, when the incidents reported on these pages took place, it was not yet a matter of indifference whether a person lived or died. If a life was snuffed out from the host of the living, another life did not instantly replace it and make people forget the deceased. Instead, […]
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Gang of One: Memoirs of a Red Guard by Fan Shen (University of Nebraska, 294 pp.) From the University of Nebraska Press page: In 1966 twelve-year-old Fan Shen, a newly minted Red Guard, plunged happily into China’s Cultural Revolution. Disillusion soon followed, then turned to disgust and fear when Shen discovered that his compatriots had […]
“Jefferson’s Fiddle is a delightful collection of modern arrangements and readings of classical and traditional repertoire that showcase Thomas Jefferson’s extensive music library.” I expect the interest in the music on this recording to be limited but I also post this for the liner notes available. Here is the note for “Jefferson and Liberty: In […]
A quick post on a movie and a couple of non-fiction books which relies on the words of others… I only get to see a few movies at the theater each year that don’t involve talking animals or cars so it was a nice change of pace to see The Tree of Life yesterday. It’s […]
My thoughts stray to the many books I want to read or themes I want to explore, causing me to lose focus on what I planned on reading. Since the year is half gone, I thought it a good time to refocus on what I want to accomplish by the end of the year. I […]
All quotes and references are from The Landmark Arrian: The Campaigns of Alexander (translation by Pamela Mensch) unless noted. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the paradoxical figure of Alexander continues to emerge in Book Three. I wanted to look a little at Alexander’s relationship with the Greeks, leading to the dismissal of Greek […]
“Alexander deserves the glory which he has enjoyed for so many centuries and among all nations; but what if he had been beaten at Arbela [Gaugamela] having the Euphrates, the Tigris, and the deserts in his rear, without any strong places of refuge, nine hundred leagues from Macedonia?” Napoleon, from The Fifteen Decisive Battles of […]
Green: A song for someone aspiring to be an ordinary god may still strike a chord with those of us aspiring to something less. Then again, it may simply be a reminder of having to mow around a grandparent’s fig tree in the heat of an Alabama summer. And wishing I had sampled more of […]
Book Three sees several changes in Alexander’s administrative choices and style. To date, most of the officers installed by Alexander as he marched through Ionia and the Levant have been Macedonians friends or trustees. The exceptions in the first two books, such as Queen Ada who had surrendered Alinda and “adopted” Alexander (1.23.7-8), stand out […]
Chapters 3 and 4 of Book Three cover Alexander’s visit to the shrine of Ammon, but questions raised by this trip linger long after the close of these chapters. Even though Arrian provides detail about the journey, full of marvels and supernatural events, his list of Alexander’s motivations and the uncertainty of the trip’s results […]