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Loading... Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter (Hinges of History) (original 2003; edition 2004)by Thomas Cahill
Work InformationSailing the Wine-dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter by Thomas Cahill (2003)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Cahill points out why some parts of history stand out. ( ) I've always been a fan of demotic erudition, and that's Cahill all over. Lots of fun, doubtless real historians might be given fits by some of Cahill's stretches, but heck . . . it's probably the most exercise they've had all day. A genuinely learned man's personal take on some things he's thought about a lot. A decent general introduction to Greek history and culture. It is populated with interesting insights and nifty stories that help elucidate the culture of the Greeks, how it evolved, and how modern Western society inherited it. The book suffers, though, from Cahill's every-now-and-then intruding opinions, which are generally of a leftist nature (for instance: boo George W. Bush [pp. 46, 250n], hooray John F. Kennedy [pp. 247-248]). It reads, sometimes, as a paean to hedonism. The foundations of what we call Western culture today seemingly sprung from one place, Greece, yet that is not the entire truth. Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea, the fourth volume of Thomas Cahill’s Hinges of History, examines and explains the structure of Greek society and ideas as well as the reasons why it has permeated so much of what we know of Western culture. But Cahill’s answer to why the Greeks matter is two-fold. Over the course of 264 pages of text, Cahill looks at all the features of Greek culture that made them so different from other ancient cultures. Through the study of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, Cahill examined the Greek’s view of war and honor in their grand war epic then how the same man expressed how the Greek’s expressed their feelings. The contradiction of the Homeric works is part of a larger theme that Cahill explores in Greek poetry beyond Homer, politicians and playwrights, philosophers, and artists. Throughout each chapter, Cahill examines what the Greeks did differently than anyone else as well as relate examples that many will know. Yet Cahill reveals that as time went on the Greeks own culture started to swallow itself until stabilized by the Romans who were without the Greek imagination and then merged with newly developing Christian religion that used Greek words to explain its beliefs to a wider world; this synthesis of the Greco-Roman world and Judeo-Christian tradition is what created Western thought and society that we know today. Cahill’s analysis and themes are for the general reader very through-provoking, but even for someone not well versed in overall Greek scholarship there seems to be something missing in this book. Just in comparing previous and upcoming volumes of Cahill’s own series, this book seems really short for one covering one of the two big parts of Western Civilization. Aside from the two chapters focused around the Homeric epics, all the other chapters seemed to be less than they could be not only in examples but also in giving connections in relevance for the reader today. For the Western society in general, the Greeks are remembered for their myths, magnificent ruins, and democracy. Thomas Cahill’s Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea does reveal that ancient Greece was more than that and why a culture millennia old matters to us today. While not perfect, this book is at least a good read for the general reader which may be what Cahill is aiming for but for those more well read it feels lacking once finished. no reviews | add a review
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"In Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea, his latest bestselling work of popular history, Thomas Cahill escorts the reader on another entertaining-and historically unassailable-journey through the landmarks of art and bloodshed that defined Greek culture nearly three millennia ago. In ancient Greece, honors could be won in making love and war, and lives were rife with contradictions. By developing the alphabet, the Greeks empowered the reader and encouraged civil discussion--yet they kept slaves. The glorious verses of the Iliad suggest that their "bellicose society of gleaming metals and rattling weapons" is not so very distant from more recent campaigns of "shock and awe." And, centuries before Zorba, Greece was a land where music, dance, and wine were essential to the high life. Granting equal time to the sacred and the profane, Cahill rivets our attention to the legacies of an ancient and enduring worldview." No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)909.09821History and Geography History World history Other Geographic Classifications Other Classifications Ocean And Sea Basins AtlanticLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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