Last week BBC Radio 4’s program “In Our Time” featured a great discussion of Thucydides, his writing, and his role as historian. I don’t know how long this link will remain active so I recommend listening to it soon (although many of their previous episodes are available in their archives). If you’re interested in reading […]
Tag: World History
Maybe I’m back? I hope so…I’ve missed this place. While we’re in the middle of so many -ennials, such as the War of 1812, the Civil War, and World War I, I did want to pass on this article from Simithsonian.com [Note: link no longer available, but parts of the article can be found at […]
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 […]
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 […]
Alexander’s Lost World is a 6 x 60” series coproduced with David Adams Films and Sky Vision. Following the course of the River Oxus (Amu Darya) for the first time, Adams takes viewers on an extraordinary 1,500-mile (2400 km) journey through war-torn Afghanistan and Central Asia. The Ancient Greeks have long been credited for bringing […]
At the risk of re-linking what you may have already seen, I wanted to highlight what Dean Putney has been doing. His blog, the Walter Koessler project, represents much work in scanning, researching, and publishing a family heirloom: his great-grandfather’s photo album. From Dean’s first post: It’s incredible for many reasons: Walter was German, and […]
Honduran archaeologist Ricardo Agurcia Fasquelle, Executive Director of the Copán Association, presents this inaugural lecture in the Great Battles Series. Until recently scholars depicted the ancient Maya as a peaceful civilization devoid of warfare. This somewhat romantic notion has been overturned by evidence of a starker reality: during the Classic period (ca. 250—900 CE) an […]