Product Description

Consider the way we think: about right and wrong, about the nature of beauty, goodness, and truth. What, in the end, it is to be a human being amid the immensity of the universe. What it is to be mortal, to live for a brief while, and die.

All this, and more, we have learned from the ancient Greeks. They moulded the basic disciplines and genres in which we still organise thought: from poetry to drama, from politics to philosophy, from history to medicine, and even ethnography.

Packed with useful cribs - history timelines; a who's who; a guide to the Greek gods; a map for those who struggle to know their Lemnos from their Lesbos - It's All Greek to Me is a bluffer's guide in one sense, a primer that will give you a helping hand around Greek democracy, or the Persian Wars, or the Parthenon. But it is much more than that; it is a book of enthusiasms and pleasures, which aims to bring ancient Greece back into the mainstream of life - where it belongs.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #41150 in Books
• Published on: 2008-10-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 254 pages

Review
"Higgins delivers digestible précis and peppy plot summaries... the appendices would make fine stocking-fillers in their own right... A love letter to ancient Greece" --The Telegraph, October 2008

Review
"With a marvellous display of knowledgeable enthusiasm and a keen talent for compression, (Higgins) shows just precisely why the Greeks matter"

Review

"Higgins's sparky style makes her subject matter so palatable that... her readers may not feel the need to seek out the classics because she has distilled them all too well."

Customer Reviews

Brilliant introduction to the ancient Greeks
The author's enthusiasm for her subject is extremely infectious. She brings the ancient Greeks wonderfully to life, covering an awful lot of territory in a very short space.Thoroughly recommended.

An excellent synopsis of ancient Greece
Charlotte Higgins has produced an excellent enchiridion. It is readable, informative and thought-provoking. It encompasses the essentials of Greek history and culture. This would be valuable as an introduction to the topic, but it also provides new insights for those who are already informed.

A triumph
Informative, entertaining and beautifully written, this book tells you everything you need to know about Ancient Greece and leaves you inspired to find out more. The writer is hugely knowledgeable about her subject but writes with a charm and ease that manages to make even Plato intelligible.

It should do more for Greece than Mamma Mia!