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The Death of Caesar by Barry Strauss Simon & Schuster, 323 pages, $27I’m rushing through this post since I want to post it on the Ides of March (and I just finished the book)… Barry Strauss, professor of history and classics at Cornell University, has provided an insightful study of the actions, motivations, and fallout […]
Judging by recent publications, there has been a resurgence in interest about William Marshal, 1st Earl of Pembroke (c. 1146 – 1219). Marshal will be the focus of several posts, so I wanted to have something masquerading as an introduction before I cover books and a TV program about him. My planned posts will be […]
Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson by S. C. Gwynne ISBN: 978-1451673289 (Scribner, 2014, hardcover) It is a matter of record that, a mere fourteen months earlier [than June 1862], the man everyone from Charlottesville to Washington was so breathlessly concerned about had been an obscure, eccentric, and unpopular college professor […]
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol S. Dweck Ballantine Books (paperback, 277 pages) ISBN 978-0-345-47232-8 I ‘ve rewritten a post on this book several times because I couldn’t get it right. This post doesn’t get it right either, but I want to pass some notes on this book because it has been an […]
Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero by James Romm Alfred A. Knopf (March 2014) ISBN: 978-0-307-59687-1 Seneca was born in 4 B.C. on the Iberian peninsula to the son of a accomplished rhetorician (Seneca the Elder). The young Seneca moved to Rome to study rhetoric and was introduced to Stoic philosophy. Entering […]
The Volga Rises in Europe by Curzio Malaparte Translated by David Moore Birlinn Limited: Edinburgh (1951) ISBN 0-7394-1930-7 I enjoyed Curzio Malaparte’s novel Kaputt and his recently translated writings. When I stumbled across this collection of dispatches he wrote during World War II I grabbed it without a second thought, wanting to see some examples […]
Escape from Camp 14: One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West by Blaine Harden(Viking: New York City, 2012)ISBN: 978-0-670-02332-5 I had planned on reading three nonfiction books on North Korea this winter but everything got shuffled out of order when I impulsively grabbed Adam Johnson’s The Orphan Master’s […]
Paul Cartledge spoke at the SPHS Autumn Lecture, Tuesday November 12th 2013 held at The Hellenic Centre in London. Thanks to David Meadows at rogueclassicism for posting a link to this lecture. My post on the book can be found here. “The story I have woven…is one of commemoration, of rivalry, classically ancient Greek rivalry […]
Primo Levi’s Universe: A Writer’s Journey by Sam Magavern Foreword by Jonathan Rosen, Afterword by Risa Sodi Palgrave Macmillan: New York City, 2009 ISBN 978-0-230-60647-0 [W]hen we read all of Levi’s writings together, we find that he has woven a great and terrifying testament, one of the most vital bodies of work in modern literature. […]
Women of the Gulag: Portraits of Five Remarkable Lives by Paul R. Gregory Hoover Institution Press: Stanford, California, October 2013 Hardcover, 264 pages ISBN 9780817915742I have not posted on much of the non-fiction I’ve read this year, something I’m determined to correct starting with this marvelous history/memoir by Paul Gregory. Links: There is plenty of […]
Paine found himself carried forward by the immense wave of his book’s popularity into the heart of New World society. If Common Sense isolated the fears and the angers of the average colonist and focused them into a strategy for the future, its impact was tenfold for the men who would face charges of treason […]
At his print shop here, Robert Bell published the first edition of Thomas Paine’s revolutionary pamphlet in January 1776. Arguing for a republican form of government under a written constitution, it played a key role in rallying American support for independence. Picture source at The Historical Marker Database We have it in our power to […]
Picture source at Wikipedia For the Fourth of July I thought I would do something different. The obvious choice would be to look at the Declaration of Independence or its philosophical history and background, but I wanted to re-read Common Sense and look at on one of America’s most problematic founding fathers, Thomas Paine. I […]
After Thermopylae: The Oath of Plataea and the End of the Graeco-Persian Wars by Paul Cartledge Emblems of Antiquity series Oxford University Press, 2013 ISBN: 9780199747320 Paul Cartledge’s name has been mentioned on this blog several times—he is the A. G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture in the Faculty of Classics at the University of […]
Demosthenes of Athens and the Fall of Classical Greece by Ian Worthington Oxford University Press, 2013 ISBN: 9780199931958 Demosthenes (384-322 BC) profoundly shaped one of the most eventful epochs in antiquity. His political career spanned three decades, during which time Greece fell victim to Macedonian control, first under Philip II and then Alexander the Great. […]
I’ve read a few books by Ryszard Kapuściński and thoroughly enjoyed them. He was a marvelous raconteur. The one book of his I posted about was Travels with Herodotus, a half-memoir and half-reflection on Herodotus’ The Histories. Reading it just after re-reading The Histories was perfect timing, amplifying my pleasure of it. The liberties Kapuściński […]
Five Billion Vodka Bottles to the Moon: Tales of a Soviet Scientist by Iosif Shklovsky Translated and adapted by Mary Fleming Zirin and Harold Zirin Introduction by Herbert Friedman W. W. Norton & Company: 1991 ISBN: 0-393-02990-5I don’t post on all the nonfiction I read but I enjoy passing on some of the offbeat books […]
Bluegrass Bluesman by Josh Graves Edited by Fred Bartenstein, Forward by Neil Rosenberg University of Illinois Press, 2012 (176 pages, paperback) ISBN: 978-0-252-07864-4If you would like an alternative to the rock autobiographies piling up lately I’ve got a recommendation. Josh Graves (1927–2006), the legendary Dobro player, gave several interviews over the last ten to fifteen […]
My last post while I’m taking a break… An article by David Mikics, “The Diplomat of Shoah History,” fits in well with much of my recent reading and I highly recommend it (even with some reservations). In the article Mikics looks at Timoth Snyder’s book Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin and the question “Does […]
I skipped the release of 2010’s Robin Hood (with Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett), but had it on as background noise recently. When I heard the following lines, though, I became more interested…well, for a few minutes anyway. Rarely does a version of Robin Hood portray Richard Coeur-de-Lion in this light: King Richard The Lionheart: […]