Why Should It Matter - It's All Greek to Me?

For November, 2004, we will be reading another of Cahill's books from his Hinges of History® series. This book describes ancient Greek civilization, and its lasting imprint, both good and bad, on our way of life. As befits a discussion of early Western civilization hundreds of years before Christ, the book is often explicit in its description of Greek life and society. Fast paced and conversational in style, it's very readable but definitely not a children's book.

From the Publisher:

The Greeks invented everything from Western warfare to mystical prayer, from logic to statecraft. Many of their achievements, particularly in art and philosophy, are widely celebrated; other important innovations and accomplishments, however, are unknown or underappreciated. In Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea, Thomas Cahill explores the legacy, good and bad, of the ancient Greeks. From the origins of Greek culture in the migrations of armed Indo-European tribes into Attica and the Peloponnesian peninsula, to the formation of the city-states, to the birth of Western literature, poetry, drama, philosophy, art, and architecture, Cahill makes the distant past relevant to the present.

New York Times review:

Thomas Cahill's Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea is the fourth book in a best-selling series that treats Western history as a long chain of gift-giving to the world, where the gifts are art, literature, political and moral values, science and philosophy. He is a talented writer, and his tour of Greek culture is a triumph of popularization: extraordinarily knowledgeable, informal in tone, amusing, wide-ranging, smartly paced. We learn much from him about Greek achievements, from Homer's epic vision to the importance of free speech, from the development of the disciplined war machine the Greeks called the phalanx to Plato's love of reason. Cahill has produced an updated version of Edith Hamilton's beloved Greek Way of 75 years ago, one that is much more sensitive to the Greeks' oppression of women and uncritical endorsement of slavery, their tinges of xenophobia and the fearsome nature of their war making. — Joy Connolly

   About the Author

Thomas Cahill is the author of the best-selling books,

• How the Irish Saved Civilization
• The Gifts of the Jews
• Desire of the Everlasting Hills
, and
• Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea

These four books comprise Volumes I, II, III, and IV respectively of The Hinges of History®, a prospective seven-volume series in which the author recounts formative moments in Western civilization, published in North America by Doubleday. In The Hinges of History®, Thomas Cahill endeavors to retell the story of the Western world through little-known stories of individuals who had pivotal impacts on history and contributed immensely to Western culture and the evolution of Western sensibility, thus revealing how we have become the people we are and why we think and feel the way we do today. Thomas Cahill is best known, in his books and lectures, for taking on a broad scope of complex history and distilling it into a remarkably accessible, illuminating and entertaining narrative. His lively, engaging writing animates cultures that existed up to five millennia ago, revealing the lives of his principal characters with refreshing insight and joy. He writes history, not in its usual terms of war and atrocity, but by inviting his audience into an ancient world to commune with some of the most influential people who ever lived. Unlike all too many history lessons, a Thomas Cahill history book or speech is impossible to forget.