Greece Books

This book is one of the 10 recomended books made by Siegmund Freud to his friend and publisher Hugo Heller, for his library. The most recent is not always the best, and I can only regret that Theodor Gomperz's volumes on Plato and Socratic Irony are no more available for sale, because they remain unsurpassed, even by more critical discussions on Plato, such as that of François Châtelet.

Any serious study of political tradition and democracy's roots in Greek and Roman philosophy should begin with this book. I was pleasantly surprised with the author's thurough research. While providing the reader with un-biased and detailed information, the author also includes his provocative and fresh opinion on the subject. An excellent read, I highly reccomend it!

It is impossible to study Greek tragedy without encountering this book in everyone's footnotes. Taplin's landmark study not only opened up new (very modern) ways of looking at his subject; it also is very readable!

Kitto has incredible insight into the meaning of Aeschylus', Sophocles' and Euripides' drama, which shows on every page of the book. Where other authors come to the drama with their own agendas, and then ignore or make excuses for anything in the plays which interferes with their "brilliant" analyses, Kitto develops analyses which address all important elements of virtually every extant play.

This is a wonderful book, very nicely illustrated with large, full colour photographs (and lots of them). The prose is highly readable and fluid, too. The price tag is a bit hefty, but worth it if you have more than a passing interest in the subject.

We recently returned from a trip to Greece and although it was a bit tough to find vegetarian food when I did it was good and I was inspired to do some cooking when I got back. So I sought out a few cookbooks, this being one. This is a good cookbook. It has some of everything - appetizers (here are the ones I've tried - they were good: stuffed grape leaves, eggplant dip, spinach balls, cucumber/yogurt dip, chick pea dip etc), breads (haven't tried any of these but they have Easter bread, Christmas bread, pita etc), pasta dishes (the only one I've tried is the pasta salad with dandelions but there are other recipes too like spaghetti with mushroom and tomato sauce, baked macaroni with eggplant and zucchini etc), Rice dishes (tomato rice, stiffed peppers, stuffed tomatoes, moussaka with rice etc), Soups (these were some of my favorites - especially the bean soup with hot peppers and the spinach and lentil soup - I embellished a bit but the basic recipes are flavorful too), legumes (all sorts of hearty bean stews as well as some other dishes), vegetables (a bunch of eggplant dishes, cauliflower dishes and others - baked eggplant with feta, tomatoes, marjoram was excellent), salads (lots of different salads, there must be 50 different recipes here, haven't tried them yet), eggs (this section is different omelet recipes mostly), cheese (a variety of recipes focused on cheese, haven't tried them but they include cheese triangles, cheese pies etc), sauces (e.g. sesame, garlic, tomato & lentil), desserts (custards, cakes etc), preserves (eggplant preserve, apricot, quince), drinks (teas, coffee, lemonade). Overall lots of neat recipes in such a small book - the recipes are all quite straight-forward (often 2-3 per page to give you an idea of the complexity). Each section leads off with some background of Greek history/culture which is neat. Overall great little cookbook that seems pretty authentic in the flavorings. I like that it provides both English and Greek names for the recipes.

Women of tremendous moral courage.

Few books have influenced my life as profoundly as this book did. As a Teacher I use this book in as many classes as I can. It outlines the courage of women who not only love freedom, but also love their people with a selflessness that can only be told by the women who lived through fascism, Nazi occupation, British domination, American intervention, and despotic terror of the Greek monarchy and the Church, which is the state. The fascist dictator Metaxas tried and failed to be a team player with the Axis. The Italian invade, the German's occupy Greece with the brutality known only to the Nazi's. The Greek patriots resist and the story begins for these women of bravery. Women from traditional backgrounds, become armed freedom defense force. They display a courage few men equal. The Greeks, including women fighters, drive the German's out of Greece. British take this opportunity to enter not as liberators but as a colonial occupiers. After the war because Greece is important to Churchill's imperial dreams the British impose the monarchy on the Greek people by force. The Greek love of freedom is more than the British are capable of crushing. The Democratic army with its left wing orientation brings in the American's. The other side of the Truman doctrine is the devastating of any hope of self-determination by the Greek people. The Democratic army betrayed by Stalin and the Eastern Block nations is left to the fate of Anglo-American supremacy and the theocratic monarchy. This is the women's story of resistance against overwhelming odds, years of imprisonment and torture always keeping up the will to resist. This inspirational story must be told over and over again.

Michael Joseph Francisconi
Dillon Montana

It's hard to believe, but during the fourth century BCE, the Greek civilization in the Western Mediterranean was the most opulent and powerful in the entire world. It seems like a dream now, but back then there were remarkable Greek city states from Agrigentum all the way across the Mediterranean to Marseilles. They formed a cultural unit that helped spread Greek thought and style right across Sicily, Italy and Southern France. This book shows us how this occurred and some of the beautiful artifacts from that era. This is a well written book, and one that should have a prominent place in any library.

The Book Description above covers the basic trajectory of the book in some detail, so I will not elaborate any further on that. What the Description does not mention is the cross-platform of this book, which attempts to speak to linguists as well as classicists, and which does so in a highly articulate and clear manner. This book is an enormous feat of lucid scholarship that proposes no more than an argument (albeit one that is painstakingly well-informed), that makes other recent attempts in this field seem bombastic and naive by comparison (see for example Barry Powell's recent 'Homer and the Origin of the Alphabet'). This book's cogently argued pursuit of the vexed question of the history of the transmission of the Phoenician script to the Greeks is a very welcome addition that for the first time attempts to cast light on the black hole of missing evidence from between 1100 to c. 750 BC. In this regard it is the only book of its kind available in any language, and its clear method of argumentation from fact will no doubt secure it a high position among scholarship on the topic. One example should suffice to explain why. While the book does not engage the question of how a 12th century Phoenician dotted omicron appears in a Greek alphabet of the 8th century (whereas the Phoenicians had ceased to use it around 1100 BC), Woodard's book is so far the only attempt to account for how such a thing could actually happen: by exploring the thesis that a history of transmission existed between two different scribal cultures on the island of Cyprus.

The thing I liked most about the book is that it is a collection of essays from several authors who are experts in various facets of the Greek-Turkish relationship and represent different sides of the story. The authors were Greek, Turkish, American, and British. The issues addressed include, as usual, the effect of the Cyprus problem on the two countries, the impact of the EU, the role of NATO, border disputes, treatment of minorities, and Middle Eastern security. However, this book was not just a narative on the problems facing the two countries but also a discussion of solutions to easing strained relations and resolving problems in the Greek-Turkish arena. Overall, a nice variety of viewpoints and potential solutions.