An interesting look at Arcadian culture
347231
I thoroughly enjoyed this walk through Acadian culture and dialect. A well-written and thoughtful investigation of how language and culture converge.
4773288
Robert Graves' "Greek Myths" is an innovative review of Greek Mythology. The book provides compiled summaries for each main Greek hero and deity. Graves then provides his own evaluation as to the anthropological origins of the myths in the context of early Greek civilization. His focus is primarily on Minoan and pre-Mycenean civilizations.

Through etymology and historical analysis, Graves contends that Greek mythology is a compilation of two distinct religious practices that were later merged. Graves argues that cults for female godesses such Hera, Diane, Athena, Hecate, etc., were the product of early Greek matriarchal/amazonian societies. Graves argues that myths such as the castration of Kronos and the labors of Herakles refer to the practice of mock-kings who were used for ceremony in fertility rituals. Such mock-kings, Graves recites, were sacrificed at the end of the ritual by the Amazon Queen. Graves suggests that the traditional patriarchal triad of Zeus, Hades, and Poseidon was introduced later when the Myceneans invaded Greece and conquered these matriarchies.

Overall, the book offers a direction of study that would be useful in corroborating a facinating theory about societies in Ancient Greece and how their evolution was presented through mythology. Unfortunately, as is usual with virtually an myth, the reason events usually become mythical is because there were few hard facts left behind to corroborate the truth that lies behind them.
2055736
David Hendin brings to life the human importance of weights and measures. He enlightens us about the history, utility and design of these interesting and sometimes inscribed objects. David provides a context for these objects as part of the cultural anthropology of the Ancient Near East. He helps us understand the interplay of human trade, weights and developing monetary systems . The interplay of weights and measures with the warp and woof of the human condition is also spelled out . Barter proceeded coinage:  weights and measures became a necessary part of our social fabric and their usage was wide spread. A fair deal and getting along in business were necessary for civilized life. As usual,  David has great stories to tell about his pursuit of these miniature art works in bazaars and fascinating meetings with denizens of the antiquity trade in who sell these objects . The book is scholarly, yet engrossing . I recommend it to anyone intrigued with the mysteries of the Ancient Near East . Stephen N. Gerson M.D.
3909401
This is a large format (coffee-table) book with lots of excellent pictures and a readable but erudite text.  "Olisboi" is the ancient Greek word for dildo (p 84), and to my eye it looks suspiciously like "lesbian", suggesting an altogether different origin for the latter word, perhaps a pun.
Among the excellent pix in this book is a mosaic from a Roman villa in Corinth.  It portrays the face of Dionysus, but the pattern around his central portrait is best described as psychedelic (p 58).  So, there really is nothing new under the Sun - this is the first century equivalent of a black light poster of op-art.  Followers of Dionysus liked to warm up with unmingled wine and allegedly some mildly stimulating herbs.  This cult goes back, apparently, to the heyday of Catal Huyuk, as there are representations of Dionysus-like and related characters.  Catal Huyuk and its short-lived successor ceased to be 7500 years ago.
Magdelanian art comes from the last Ice Age.  It's the same culture discussed as the source of the Atlantis legend by Mary Settegast in her excellent "Plato Prehistorian: 10,000 to 5000 B.C. Myth, Religion, Archaeology" which has a chapter about Catal Huyuk and is out in a Jan 2000 edition.
Among the Magdelanian art shown in Love in the Ancient World are phalli carved from mammoth ivory up to 19,000 years ago, and a vulva carved on a cavern wall up to 32,000 years ago.  I figure that people by and large were not living in caves and carving naughty bits on the wall, but rather that the same kinds of people who pursue artistic fields today were off by themselves.  Most of the cave art found in books concerns animals and supposed hunting magic rituals, so it's probably a public service that Miles and Norwich have included these surpressed works.
See also "Eros In Pompeii" by Michael Grant with photography by Antonia Mulas and "A Book of Love from the Ancient Mediterranean: The Sweetness of Honey and the Sting of Bees" by Michelle Lovric and Nikiforos Doxiadis Mardas.
518515
While the name Arcadia Publishing may not be a household word, many readers are familiar with their style without realizing it. Arcadia Publishing is the company which has put out a prodigious collection of local history books since the early 1990s about all parts of the country.  They are particularly well known for their Images of America series, which each focus on a particular city, town or region and include numerous vintage black and white photographs with small amounts of commentary to accompany them. Arcadia now has a number of other similar lines following the same basic vintage photos with slender commentary on a variety of special or localized interests, including postcard histories of a particular place and corporate histories, among others.

Arcadia now has a similar series called "Images of Sports" that follow the basic model used in other series.  This series features books in a variety of American sports, and includes about a dozen books on football history, particularly the history of specific college football programs. These books include histories of such schools at Harvard, Yale, Michigan State, Auburn, Nebraska, Northwestern and others, with the most recent (as of this writing) a book on Oregon State University football.

Dearest to my heart in college football, however, is the University of Wisconsin, which is featured in this entry in the Images of Sports series. I started going to Badger games as a child and had season tickets for three years while attending school there during the Dave McCain era of the early 1980s, when Al Toon, Tim Krumrie and others led the Badgers back to postseason bowl game play for the first time since the early 1960s. No matter what era of Wisconsin football is of most interest to the reader, however, this new book will bring back many happy memories. Like other Arcadia books, this book features a gold mine of wonderful old black and white photos which in this case date back to the 1890s and go through the early 2000s, and features a good balance of shots from throughout Wisconsin football history. The book also features commentary from Dave Anderson, which sometimes is a bit too idiosyncratic and focused on his own experiences, but overall a useful addition. Here, too are useful lists for Badger fans, such as award winners, the records of all UW coaches through 2004, and more. But like other Arcadia books, this books is all about the pictures, and wonderful ones they are. I particularly enjoyed the collections of program covers through the years. Any Wisconsin Badgers football fan or Wisconsin history buff will enjoy seeing them, and even people who are neither may well enjoy this pleasant, slender paperback.
4064676
I really found this interesting to read. I have family members who love fairies, and while I've never been a huge fan, I knew something about them. This book is a serious look at the mythology of fairies, and where they appear in culture. There are poems and definitions, and serious discussions of folklore. Reading this gave me more to talk about with my family members, and I could easily justify using it as a source for a paper on folklore. The prose is easy to follow, and more grounded than I was expecting. Very interesting, and informative read that I could see getting for family or friends with an interest in fairies or folklore.
3769554
I'm glad to have read this as it puts into historical and geographical perspective the creation of the system of biological classification created by Linnaeus. There were various other systems proposed at the time and we see a little of them. Linnaeus stayed in Sweden most of his life however.

The man whose names is given to many plants, banksia, however occupies most of the book. Banks did considerably more travelling and attached himself as scientific collector and botanist to several trips including Cook's voyage which gave the name to Botany Bay.

The sex alluded to in the title, refers both to classification of plants by their reproductive organs (rather than shape of leaf, say) and to what the travellers got up to in warmer climes like Tahiti. The scandals we are told followed men like Banks through their later lives. The men mentioned were prominent in the Royal Society and enabled trade and advancement of science; for instance they recorded the transit of Venus across the Sun, in order to establish how far Earth was from the Sun.

I thought the story could have flowed more freely but I admit it would be hard to do that without fictionalising, and records of the day were stiff or satirical. Good comparisons would be The Seashell On The Mountaintop, Longitude, and The Mapmaker's Wife.
1517703
I read the Barnes & Noble reprint of this major work on the pre-classical history of the Greeks.  Originally published in the UK by Phoenix Press, a division of Orion Books, in 1987, this is an extensive and detailed work written in Grant's usual clear, readable style.  Phoenix reissued the book in 2001.

By taking a geographical and ethnic approach, Grant gives overlapping views of the people we now know as the Greeks, from their various cultural aspects.  Grant covers the interaction of the tribes of the Greeks, from the earliest writings, in interaction with the others they interacted with.

Grant covers the political, military, religious, linguistic artistic and social spheres in each of the regions and major city-states in each era.  It was especially helpful to get the information on the formative states of the Greek sub-groups and the other ethnicities they lived with, intermarried with, fought and absorbed.

Grant probes the known facts and likely clues to draw a picture of the ethnic and political landscape of the period 1000-500 BC.  Grant provides the derivations and possible meanings of early names for peoples and places.

Grant paints an ethnic tapestry of the whole world of the Middle East, Northern Africa and the Mediterranean.  He relates known information about the Greeks in their pre-history and early classical foundations to the writings of the Middle Eastern cultures and literature, including the Hebrew writings in the Bible.

He deals with details of culture worldview in the mythological and early philosophical, or scientific, writings of ancient authors.  He analyzes influences of the ancient Sumerian and Semitic, as well as Hurrian-Hittite creation myths on the early Greek mythological writings.
173558
Current events in Greece echo the upheavals of the end of the Hellenic period in the grotesque internecine fighting of the later 5th and earlier 4th centuries.  It is good to have a directory of some of the participants, all related by the fact that they are mentioned in Plato's writings (i.e., are characters in Plato's dialogues).  The work  is a good reminded that Plato was not making up fictional characters, but using real, flesh and blood contemporaries to take parts in his intellectual dramas.  Great work!
4262009
Richard Sheppard's book The Artist on the Road - Impressions of Greece, merges three themes.  First, the book is a travelogue without pretense or glory.  It tells of frustrations and surprise - catching a bus to Eleusis to find the site closed for a holiday; ordering a coffee in Thebes to learn they don't understand `take-away' and you end up sitting (and unexpectedly appreciating), the surroundings, or enjoying dinner with father's new friends of fish, spanakopita, and Greek white wine.

Second, the book brings history alive.  It summarizes key events from the past in one or two sentences.  Why did Agamemnon's wife Klytemnestra axe him to death in a bath (he had sacrificed their daughter to goddess Artemis to gain favorable sailing winds to Troy); what were the characteristics of the Oracle of Delphi ("...good character and virtue among the peasants of the local community"), who built the castle of Kasteli (Venetians, as protection from pirates).

Third, the book is a narration about the joys and frustrations of an artist wanting to paint scenes while traveling.  A century ago, visitors had no cameras and used to sketch scenes of places they visited.  Richard's book illustrates how this art form has returned.  He wants to paint 160 scenes, but finds he might only have time for 17.  He needs to travel, but is frustrated at how this detracts from having time to paint.  Finally, his inhibition to paint in public vanishes after one local woman gasps at his image of the Porch of the Karyatids and hands him a red apple in appreciation.

Binding these themes together are his images - beautiful color drawings and paintings that bring Greece alive.  I've taken several art history courses, but find Richard's paintings of the Lion Gate at Mycenae, the Temple of Athena Pronaia and the Gulf of Corinth more powerful than any photograph for providing me with inspiration to visit.  And his descriptions and images of the local wine don't hurt.

Impressions of Greece is a thoughtful narration that shows how it is not glamour - but enthusiasm, curiosity, persistence, and personal goals that make travel worthwhile.
988279
I got this book from the remainders section at my local bookstore. It illuminates a neglected period of ancient history, that is often seen as a period of decline, even though it produced some of the pinnacles of Greek thought like Euclid.
Shipley writes for a scholarly audience, and it shows. The book's exposition is somewhat muddled and does not follow a progressive plan. For instance, many references are made to the role of Pergamon early in the book, and explained only far later in the (relatively short) chapter on the Seleukids and Pergamon. The maps are interspersed seemingly at random with the text, and none of them shows the boundaries or zones of influence of the competing hellenistic kingdoms. Making the most of this book will require at least two readings.
As such, I don't recommend this book as a first introduction to the subject, as there is a tendency to lose track of the forest for the tree. It is excellent for its in-depth survey of the field, and its highly annotated bibliographic references (as befits a scholarly work).
2910879
Andrea di Robilant's&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Chasing-the-Rose-An-Adventure-in-the-Venetian-Countryside/dp/030796292X/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Chasing the Rose: An Adventure in the Venetian Countryside</a>&nbsp;is a charming little book about the author's search for the identity of an old family rose.  The search leads him back to Empress Josephine of France, a friend of his great-great-great-great-grandmother Lucia, about whom he already written (see&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Lucia-A-Venetian-Life-in-the-Age-of-Napleon-Vintage/dp/1400095115/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Lucia: A Venetian Life in the Age of Napleon (Vintage)</a>).  He also meets an interesting group of modern gardeners who specialize in growing the original imported roses from China and the first generations of hybrids from the 17th through the 19th Centuries.

Although I am not particularly interested in roses, I found the material interesting, the author's writing graceful, and the entire story quite charming.  It was a special treat to have Portland, the City of Roses, mentioned for its plantings of the pink hybrid tea rose "Madame Caroline Testout" lining the streets for the 1905 Lewis and Clark Exposition.  Recommended!
3276613
There is a lot of information in this book about Dionysus and how he was worshipped in the ancient world.  I found what I read here to be very interesting.  I was less interested in the worship part of the book, but I still found it to be worth reading.  The author did a lot of research and I found her writing style to be easy to read.

My only issue with this book is I would not use this as a starting point for those interested in reading more about the Greek god of wine.  It is still a good read, though.
554763
As a frequent visitor to Venice this book provides both an interesting alternative view to the classical, mythical and romantic view of the city, which often concentrates on the static and romantic view of Byron and Ruskin, together with a call to regenerate the city with a forward looking and dynamic future.

Standish provides a useful history of the impact of the convergence of the global environmental and local conservationist movements and how they have in recent times led to the opposition to and construction of myths concerning the new mobile dams which will help provide protection for the city and Lagoon from the sea. By examining the distant and recent history of Venice and its many myths in the context of a study of risk and resilience he provides, in a way that can be generalised, a pointer to how the problematic and modern trends to align society with nature needs to be questioned. If we are to welcome modernity through bold engineering projects as well as have a positive cultural attitude then problems need to be seen as opportunities to be embraced and Standish shows we need not simply adapt to what many now see as our accommodation within nature.

I for one will never see Venice in the same light.

Why just 4 stars? May be just a few diagrams of the dams project would have been interesting although I guess they are available elsewhere.
2615192
I've been reading snippets of the author's work, off and on, for several years and had wondered when there would be any sort of book that compiles them.  This book does just that and showcases in an alternate history setting the civilizations/countries/cultures of the Mediterranean with that of the Silene, Fauns, Satyrs, and the biggest of them all, Centaurs, all during the age of the Greek classics (or not much later).

Those who have a fondness of such historical times (or just a mythological/history junkie in general!) will have a good time in reading it, just be sure to brush up on your Greek so that you'll know the difference between a container of wine and a Rhodian warship!
2055187
Remembering Babylon is the story of Gemmy - washed up on the Australian coast as a boy after a life of harshness that is hard to imagine, he is taken in by group of Aborigines. Sixteen years later, he makes himself known to the white community of northern Queensland, where he causes the community to examine not only it's attitude towards what is `civilised', but also causes them to look inwards upon themselves.
This is a story about frontiers - the physical frontier of the small community that Gemmy joins; the frontier of the new state of Queensland; and the frontier between civilised and primitive.  There is some beautiful work in this book, especially in its examination of small community dynamics, and coming of age. But I feel that Malouf starts threads that he doesn't bother to finish - the ambiguous characters of Mrs. Hutchence and Leona are introduced with promises of an exotic past, yet we never get to know them. George the school teacher is developed, only to be left out of the second half of the story. While Malouf manages to pack a lot of punch into a short tale, I feel that perhaps just a little be of expansion would have made this an even better book. But I will admit that I got a kick out of reading a story set in my home state of Queensland - it is nice to see that there is some Australian historical fiction set somewhere other than the Southern States!
4976228
Mr. Pye has written a very interesting book focused primarily on the social and commercial history of the lands bordering the North Sea from roughly the end of Roman influence to the beginning of the modern era. The book is structured not as a linear history, but rather as a number of subject-based chapters that almost stand on their own as short essays. For example, there are chapters discussing the development of law and the written word;  marriage, romance and families; commerce and money. The basic theme - which is very effectively argued -  is that this area was much less of a backwater and this age was much less "dark"  than we might imagine. Left relatively free of strong central authority, societies around the North Sea developed extensive trading networks, sophisticated commercial systems and complex economies - all of which contributed as much to our world as their more familiar Mediterranean counterparts.