Book One: Greece: Splendours of Ancient Greece
by Furio Durando
Ancient Greece was the cradle of western civilization; its influence reverberates today in almost every sphere of life, from philosophy and politics to literature and art. This volume explores in almost 400 stunning colour photographs the best of its architecture, paintings, sculptures and brilliantly sophisticated pottery and metalwork. This superb overview of the extraordinary riches of Greek art encompasses every era, from the abstract purity of the Cycladic figurines and the perfection of the Classical period to the ‘baroque’ of the Hellenistic era. The accessible and wide-ranging text begins in the Bronze Age with Minoan Crete, and proceeds through the glories of 5th-century Athens and the birth of democracy, to the feats of Alexander the Great and ultimately to Greece’s conquest by Rome. Further sections examine other essential aspects of Greek culture, including architecture, religion, theatre, sport and warfare. Completing the volume is a spectacular itinerary that takes in the most beautiful cities of ancient Greece and its colonies, including Asia Minor and southern Italy. Descriptions are brought to life and cities restored to their former glory in specially commissioned colour reconstructions, including several fold-outs. With numerous diagrams, site plans, maps and a glossary, Greece: Splendours of an Ancient Civilization is a panoramic study of one of the most important periods in human history.
Book Two: Meet the Philosophers of Ancient Greece: Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Ancient Greek Philosophy but didn’t Know who to Ask
by Patricia F. O’Grady
Synopsis
Ancient Greece was the cradle of philosophy in the Western tradition. Meet the Philosophers of Ancient Greece brings the thoughts and lives of the pioneers of Western philosophy down from their sometimes remote heights and introduces them to a modern audience. Comprising of seventy essays, written by internationally distinguished scholars in a lively and accessible style, this book presents the values, ideas, wisdom and arguments of the most significant thinkers from the world of ancient Greece. Commencing with Thales of Miletus and continuing to the end of the Ancient Period of philosophy by way of Heraclitus, Parmenides, Protagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Archimedes, Epictetus this book explores the major contributions of each philosopher as well as looking at archeological and historical sites where they lived, worked and thought. This book is an outstanding introduction to the world of the philosophers of Ancient Greece.
Book Three: Finding People in Early Greece
by Carol G. Thomas
Synopsis
Progress toward a fuller understanding of preclassical Greece was steady until the 1950s, when a general crisis in all the human-centered disciplines erupted. Scholars undertook a serious reexamination of their tools and data, producing new brands of history, geography, anthropology, archaeology, economics, and sociology. Although these new approaches were widely adopted, the developments also bred a countercurrent beginning in the 1980s and 1990s. The fallout from this backlash was serious in several respects, one of the most important of which was the elimination of the human element in the products of the “new” human-centered disciplines. In Finding People in Early Greece, Carol Thomas addresses these developments and the recent accommodation and rapprochement of the “old” and “new” that has emerged. She then offers two case studies: Jason and the voyage of the Argo, deriving from the “Age of Heroes,” and Hesiod, probably the first literate European, who lived ca. 700 BCE during the “Age of Revolution,” which catapulted Greece out of its long Dark Age into the vibrant Classical Age. With these two examples, Thomas shows that through a combination of scientific tools and historically oriented scholarship, a larger context in which individual subjects lived can be offered.
