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    It's All Greek To Me: From Homer to the Hippocratic Oath, How Ancient Greece Has Shaped Our World
    Unavailable
    It's All Greek To Me: From Homer to the Hippocratic Oath, How Ancient Greece Has Shaped Our World
    Unavailable
    It's All Greek To Me: From Homer to the Hippocratic Oath, How Ancient Greece Has Shaped Our World
    Ebook282 pages4 hours

    It's All Greek To Me: From Homer to the Hippocratic Oath, How Ancient Greece Has Shaped Our World

    By Charlotte Higgins

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    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    “A completely excellent guide to Greek poetry, drama, philosophy, history and culture. Philip Pullman has said that he would put it into every school and every teacher-training course and I’d echo that. . . . Highly entertaining as well as informative.” —A.N. Wilson, Evening Standard

    An informative, smart, and amusing narrative about how influential Greeks and Greek culture have been on the rest of the world, from art and architecture to literature, politics, and love

    Why are some laws Draconian? What is an Achilles heel? Why were the Spartans Spartan? Charlotte Higgins answers all these questions and more in this indispensable guide to the greatest civilization the world has ever known.

    Consider the way we think: about right and wrong, about the nature of beauty, goodness, and truth. About 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 we have learned from the ancient Greeks. They molded the basic disciplines and genres in which we still organize thought: from poetry to drama, from politics to philosophy, from history to medicine, and even ethnography.

    Packed with useful facts – history timelines; mythology for dummies; even a map for those who struggle to know their Lemnos from their Lesbos – It’s All Greek To Me is a guide in one sense, but it is also so much more. This book aims to unlock the richness of this fascinating culture and to place it where it should be, in the mainstream of life.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateMar 23, 2010
    ISBN9780061981395
    Unavailable
    It's All Greek To Me: From Homer to the Hippocratic Oath, How Ancient Greece Has Shaped Our World
    Author

    Charlotte Higgins

    Charlotte Higgins read classics at Balliol College, Oxford. She has worked for the Guardian newspaper for over a decade in various guises, from 2001 as classical music editor and from 2008 as chief arts writer. She began her career in journalism at Vogue. She is also the author of Latin Love Lessons. She lives in London.

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    • 4/5
      63. It's All Greek to Me : From Homer to the Hippocratic Oath, How Ancient Greece Has Shaped Our World by Charlotte Higginspublished: 2008format: 220 page hardcoveracquired: library read: Oct 1, 13-16rating: 3½After a nice introduction, I found I didn't like it, and then I did, and then I finished and now I've kind of lost whatever affect it had, and that about sums it up. Higgins tries to give a brief tour through Ancient Greek literature from Homer to Aristotle. It's fast paced with snarky humor and she provides some nice summaries. I particularly valued her take on Plato and Aristotle since I haven't and don't plan to read either. She also had a nice take on Sappho. And she had me wanting to read both Herodotus and Thucydides. She almost lost me early as her opening chapter on Homer (who she goes back to several times) dissolved into something like cliff notes, including (bad) chapter-by-chapter brief summaries. But she didn't do anything like that again and I was happy to read through the rest of it.