Download or read book Breaking with Athens written by Christopher A. Colmo and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2005 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this controversial new book, Christopher A. Colmo offers a view of the 10th century Arab philosopher Alfarabi that draws attention to a previously unremarked aspect of his philosophic project. Colmo argues that as a philosopher Alfarabi felt compelled to question the philosophic tradition as deeply as he might question religious tradition, and this he did with such power and brilliance that the result was a new philosophic perspective. With unique access to both Islamic and pagan philosophical traditions, Alfarabi took the side of Greek philosophy as representative of human reason and defended its ultimate autonomy. However, Alfarabi went further, moving away from Plato and Aristotle's vision of philosophy as divine to an understanding of philosophy in a way that allowed it to be seen as knowledge and action in the service of human power and happiness. Alfarabi offers a powerful new answer to the question, why philosophy? His subtle defense of and debate with the ancients raises questions of hermeneutics as well as substantive questions of philosophy, politics, and theology. Breaking With Athens sheds new light on Alfarabi's enduring answers to perennial questions, making it essential for students of philosophy, political science, theology, and the history of ideas.
Download or read book Assassins of Athens written by Jeffrey Siger and published by Sourcebooks, Inc.. This book was released on 2019-03-01 with total page 21 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discover a gripping new mystery series with the extended excerpt of Assassins of Athens When the body of a boy from one of Greece's most prominent families turns up in a dumpster in one of Athens' worst neighborhoods, Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis of the Greek Police's Special Crimes Division is certain there's a message in the murder. But who sent it and why? Andreas' search for answers takes him deep into the sordid, criminal side of Athens nightlife and then to the glittering world of high society, where age-old frictions between old and new money breed jealousy, murder, revenge, revolutionaries, and some very dangerous truths. It is a journey amid ruthless, powerful adversaries that brings Andreas face-to-face with old grudges, new emotions, ancient Athenian practices, and modern political realities once thought unimaginable. Assassins of Athens brings readers deep into a world of crime set against the seductive backdrop of modern-day Greece in Jeffrey Siger's must-read series. "Jeffrey Siger's Assassins of Athens is a teasingly complex and suspenseful thriller....Siger and his protagonist, Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis, are getting sharper and surer with each case."—Thomas Perry, New York Times bestselling author
Download or read book Going Solo written by Roald Dahl and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2012-02-02 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Going Solo, the world's favourite storyteller, Roald Dahl, tells of life as a fighter pilot in Africa. 'They did not think for one moment that they would find anything but a burnt-out fuselage and a charred skeleton, and they were astounded when they came upon my still-breathing body lying in the sand nearby.' In 1938 Roald Dahl was fresh out of school and bound for his first job in Africa, hoping to find adventure far from home. However, he got far more excitement than he bargained for when the outbreak of the Second World War led him to join the RAF. His account of his experiences in Africa, crashing a plane in the Western Desert, rescue and recovery from his horrific injuries in Alexandria, flying a Hurricane as Greece fell to the Germans, and many other daring deeds, recreates a world as bizarre and unnerving as any he wrote about in his fiction. 'Very nearly as grotesque as his fiction. The same compulsive blend of wide-eyed innocence and fascination with danger and horror' Evening Standard 'A non-stop demonstration of expert raconteurship' The New York Times Book Review Roald Dahl, the brilliant and worldwide acclaimed author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, Matilda, and many more classics for children, also wrote scores of short stories for adults. These delightfully disturbing tales have often been filmed and were most recently the inspiration for the West End play, Roald Dahl's Twisted Tales by Jeremy Dyson. Roald Dahl's stories continue to make readers shiver today.
Download or read book Athens Burning written by Robert Garland and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2017-01-26 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In this next offering for the Witness to Ancient History series, Robert Garland writes about the Persian invasion of Greece in the 5th century BC. After introducing the reader to the contextual background of the Greco-Persian Wars, including the famous Battle of Marathon, Garland describes the various stages of the invasion from both the Persian and Greek point of view. He focuses on the Greek evacuation of Attica (the peninsular region of Greece that includes Athens), the siege of the Acropolis, the eventual defeat of the Persians by Athenian and Spartan armies, and the return of the Greek people to their land. Coming off his 2014 PUP book on the experience of diaspora in ancient Greece, Garland is well placed to speak authoritatively on this important time in ancient history when the Greeks had to flee their homeland. Garland is an experienced and productive writer whose experience producing video lecture courses for The Great Courses company makes him an ideal author for this introductory volume"--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book Policing Athens written by Virginia J. Hunter and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-15 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From household gossip to public beatings, this social history explores the many channels through which Athenian maintained public order. Virginia Hunter draws mostly on Attic court proceedings, which allowed for a wide range of evidence, including common rumors about a defendant's character and testimony, obtained under torture, of slaves against their masters. She describes Athenian "policing" as a form of social control that took place across a range of private and public levels. Not only does policing appear to have a collective enterprise, but its methods were embedded in a variety of social institutions, resulting in the blurring of the line between state and society. Hunter's inquiry into topics such as household authority, disputes among kin, the presence of slaves in the house, gossip in the home and neighborhood, and forms of public punishment reveals a continuum extending from self-regulation among kn and punititve actions enforced by the state. Recognizing the bias of legal documents toward the wealthy, Hunter concentrates on exposing the voices of the less powerful and less privileged members of society, including women and slaves. In so doing she is among the first to address systematically such important issues as the authority of women, self-help, and corporal punishment. Virginia J. Hunter is Professor of History at York University. She is author of Past and Process in Herodotus and Thucydides (Princeton) and Thucydides, the Artful Reporter (Toronto). Originally published in 1994. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Download or read book Athens at the Margins written by Nathan T. Arrington and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-10-19 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How the interactions of non-elites influenced Athenian material culture and society The seventh century BC in ancient Greece is referred to as the Orientalizing period because of the strong presence of Near Eastern elements in art and culture. Conventional narratives argue that goods and knowledge flowed from East to West through cosmopolitan elites. Rejecting this explanation, Athens at the Margins proposes a new narrative of the origins behind the style and its significance, investigating how material culture shaped the ways people and communities thought of themselves. Athens and the region of Attica belonged to an interconnected Mediterranean, in which people, goods, and ideas moved in unexpected directions. Network thinking provides a way to conceive of this mobility, which generated a style of pottery that was heterogeneous and dynamic. Although the elite had power, they were unable to agree on the norms of conspicuous consumption and status display. A range of social actors used objects, contributing to cultural change and to the socially mediated production of meaning. Historiography and the analysis of evidence from a wide range of contexts—cemeteries, sanctuaries, workshops, and symposia—offers the possibility to step outside the aesthetic frameworks imposed by classical Greek masterpieces and to expand the canon of Greek art. Highlighting the results of new excavations and looking at the interactions of people with material culture, Athens at the Margins provocatively shifts perspectives on Greek art and its relationship to the eastern Mediterranean.
Download or read book When Athens Met Jerusalem written by John Mark Reynolds and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2010-02-26 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christian theology shaped and is shaping many places in the world, but it was the Greeks who originally gave a philosophic language to Christianity. John Mark Reynolds's book When Athens Met Jerusalem provides students a well-informed introduction to the intellectual underpinnings (Greek, Roman and Christian) of Western civilization and highlights how certain current intellectual trends are now eroding those very foundations. This work makes a powerful contribution to the ongoing faith versus reason debate, showing that these two dimensions of human knowing are not diametrically opposed, but work together under the direction of revelation.
Download or read book Athens After Empire written by Ian Worthington and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "When we think of ancient Athens, the image invariably coming to mind is of the Classical city, with monuments beautifying everywhere; the Agora swarming with people conducting business and discussing political affairs; and a flourishing intellectual, artistic, and literary life, with life anchored in the ideals of freedom, autonomy, and democracy. But in 338 that forever changed when Philip II of Macedonia defeated a Greek army at Chaeronea to impose Macedonian hegemony over Greece. The Greeks then remained under Macedonian rule until the new power of the Mediterranean world, Rome, annexed Macedonia and Greece into its empire. How did Athens fare in the Hellenistic and Roman periods? What was going on in the city, and how different was it from its Classical predecessor? There is a tendency to think of Athens remaining in decline in these eras, as its democracy was curtailed, the people were forced to suffer periods of autocratic rule, and especially under the Romans enforced building activity turned the city into a provincial one than the "School of Hellas" that Pericles had proudly proclaimed it to be, and the Athenians were forced to adopt the imperial cult and watch Athena share her home, the sacred Acropolis, with the goddess Roma. But this dreary picture of decline and fall belies reality, as my book argues. It helps us appreciate Hellenistic and Roman Athens and to show it was still a vibrant and influential city. A lot was still happening in the city, and its people were always resilient: they fought their Macedonian masters when they could, and later sided with foreign kings against Rome, always in the hope of regaining that most cherished ideal, freedom. Hellenistic Athens is far from being a postscript to its Classical predecessor, as is usually thought. It was simply different. Its rich and varied history continued, albeit in an altered political and military form, and its Classical self lived on in literature and thought. In fact, it was its status as a cultural and intellectual juggernaut that enticed Romans to the city, some to visit, others to study. The Romans might have been the ones doing the conquering, but in adapting aspects of Hellenism for their own cultural and political needs, they were the ones, as the poet Horace claimned, who ended up being captured"--
Download or read book Foreign Words written by Vassilis Alexakis and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Crossing countries and continents, this narrative follows a son lost for words over the death of his father. Unable to write the phrase "My father is dead" in either his native Greek or his adopted French, he heads for Africa to undertake the learning of Sango. Traveling across both borders and time, he examines his past, his family history, and the colonial and political ties of his homelands. While at first he does not know why learning a new and uncommon language has become vital to him, he comes to discover that the new language enables him to easily write of his father's passing. But as he truly experiences Sango--meets its speakers, travels where it emerged and has struggled to survive--his intimacy with it grows, and he is once again unable to utter the telling phrase. Meditating on language, loss, and the power of words to express or constrain human emotion, this tale of speaking, living, and letting go is filled with delicate suspense, humor, and honesty.
Download or read book Puddin written by Julie Murphy and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2018-05-08 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The irresistible companion to the #1 New York Times bestseller Dumplin’, now a Netflix feature film starring Danielle Macdonald and Jennifer Aniston, and a soundtrack by Dolly Parton! Millie Michalchuk has gone to fat camp every year since she was a little girl. Not this year. This year she has new plans to chase her secret dream of being a newscaster—and to kiss the boy she’s crushing on. Callie Reyes is the pretty girl who is next in line for dance team captain and has the popular boyfriend. But when it comes to other girls, she’s more frenemy than friend. When circumstances bring the girls together over the course of a semester, they surprise everyone (especially themselves) by realizing that they might have more in common than they ever imagined. A story about unexpected friendship, romance, and Texas-size girl power, this is another winner from Julie Murphy.
Download or read book Athens written by Bruce Clark and published by Apollo. This book was released on 2022-06-09 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new narrative history of Athens, telling the three-thousand-year story of the birthplace of Western civilization.
Download or read book Socrates Against Athens written by James A. Colaiaco and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-04-15 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As an essential companion to Plato's Apology and Crito, Socrates Against Athens provides valuable historical and cultural context to our understanding of the trial.
Download or read book Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens written by Josiah Ober and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-10-01 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book asks an important question often ignored by ancient historians and political scientists alike: Why did Athenian democracy work as well and for as long as it did? Josiah Ober seeks the answer by analyzing the sociology of Athenian politics and the nature of communication between elite and nonelite citizens. After a preliminary survey of the development of the Athenian "constitution," he focuses on the role of political and legal rhetoric. As jurymen and Assemblymen, the citizen masses of Athens retained important powers, and elite Athenian politicians and litigants needed to address these large bodies of ordinary citizens in terms understandable and acceptable to the audience. This book probes the social strategies behind the rhetorical tactics employed by elite speakers. A close reading of the speeches exposes both egalitarian and elitist elements in Athenian popular ideology. Ober demonstrates that the vocabulary of public speech constituted a democratic discourse that allowed the Athenians to resolve contradictions between the ideal of political equality and the reality of social inequality. His radical reevaluation of leadership and political power in classical Athens restores key elements of the social and ideological context of the first western democracy.
Download or read book From Democrats to Kings written by Michael Scott and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2010-09-16 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A popular history of how the ancient world turned from a democracy to a monarchy and “shine[s] a light on the culture that bloomed as Athens faded.”(The Daily Mail) Athens, 404 BC. The Democratic city-state has been ravaged by a long and bloody war with neighboring Sparta. The search for scapegoats begins and Athens, liberty's beacon in the ancient world, turns its sword on its own way of life. Civil war and much bloodshed ensue. Defining moments of Greek history, culture, politics, religion and identity are debated ferociously in Athenian board rooms, back streets and battlefields. By 323 BC, Athens and the rest of Greece, not to mention a large part of the known world, has come under the control of an absolute monarch and a model for despots for millennia to come: Alexander the Great. In this superb popular history, Michael Scott explores the dramatic and little-known story of how the ancient world went from democracy to monarchy in less than 100 years. A superb example of popular history writing, From Democrats to Kings gives us a fresh take on the challenges we face today as democracies—old and new—fight for survival, in which war-time and peace-time have become indistinguishable and in which the severity of the economic crisis is only matched by a crisis in our own sense of self. “Accessible and punchy . . . a wide readership cannot fail to be entertained as well as instructed about a world that is both familiar and alien, modern as well as ancient.” —Paul Cartledge, author of Thermopylae “Gloriously entertaining and provocative.” —Tom Holland, author of Rubicon, Persian Fire
Download or read book The Athenian Empire written by George William Cox and published by . This book was released on 1889 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Reason s Inquisition written by Christopher A. Colmo and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2023-08-29 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reasons Inquisition: On Doubtful Ground is an exploration in the literature of political philosophy before and after Alfarabi and ranging from Thucydides to Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin. These studies, most of them previously unpublished, open inquiries into theory and practice, reason and revelation, and the relation between thinkers ancient and modern. Readers may be surprised to see the Platonist Alfarabi presented as a critic of Plato’s theory in the name of practice, while Alfarabi and Hobbes are shown to have a common interest in a theory commensurate with action. Strauss, Voegelin and Lucien Febvre all explore the problem of reason and revelation in relation to the limits of human knowledge. An ambitious study of Shakespeare’s Macbeth explores the ambiguity of both nature and knowledge in relation to male and female, good and evil, present and future. The contrast between ancients and moderns is explicit in questions of the modern aspects of Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus and of Rousseau’s reversal of Plato. Kierkegaard and Heidegger bring radical modernity into focus against a Platonic background in the closing essay. These diverse essays attempt to follow the thinkers and themes explored in turning a critical gaze upon reason itself.
Download or read book The Parthenon Enigma written by Joan Breton Connelly and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2014-01-28 with total page 521 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Built in the fifth century b.c., the Parthenon has been venerated for more than two millennia as the West’s ultimate paragon of beauty and proportion. Since the Enlightenment, it has also come to represent our political ideals, the lavish temple to the goddess Athena serving as the model for our most hallowed civic architecture. But how much do the values of those who built the Parthenon truly correspond with our own? And apart from the significance with which we have invested it, what exactly did this marvel of human hands mean to those who made it? In this revolutionary book, Joan Breton Connelly challenges our most basic assumptions about the Parthenon and the ancient Athenians. Beginning with the natural environment and its rich mythic associations, she re-creates the development of the Acropolis—the Sacred Rock at the heart of the city-state—from its prehistoric origins to its Periklean glory days as a constellation of temples among which the Parthenon stood supreme. In particular, she probes the Parthenon’s legendary frieze: the 525-foot-long relief sculpture that originally encircled the upper reaches before it was partially destroyed by Venetian cannon fire (in the seventeenth century) and most of what remained was shipped off to Britain (in the nineteenth century) among the Elgin marbles. The frieze’s vast enigmatic procession—a dazzling pageant of cavalrymen and elders, musicians and maidens—has for more than two hundred years been thought to represent a scene of annual civic celebration in the birthplace of democracy. But thanks to a once-lost play by Euripides (the discovery of which, in the wrappings of a Hellenistic Egyptian mummy, is only one of this book’s intriguing adventures), Connelly has uncovered a long-buried meaning, a story of human sacrifice set during the city’s mythic founding. In a society startlingly preoccupied with cult ritual, this story was at the core of what it meant to be Athenian. Connelly reveals a world that beggars our popular notions of Athens as a city of staid philosophers, rationalists, and rhetoricians, a world in which our modern secular conception of democracy would have been simply incomprehensible. The Parthenon’s full significance has been obscured until now owing in no small part, Connelly argues, to the frieze’s dismemberment. And so her investigation concludes with a call to reunite the pieces, in order that what is perhaps the greatest single work of art surviving from antiquity may be viewed more nearly as its makers intended. Marshalling a breathtaking range of textual and visual evidence, full of fresh insights woven into a thrilling narrative that brings the distant past to life, The Parthenon Enigma is sure to become a landmark in our understanding of the civilization from which we claim cultural descent.
