Good survey history of a busy timeframe. The answer is yes we do. From calendars to democracy to the very languages we speak, Western civilization owes a debt to these classical societies. Great book and a fast and easy transaction. Your recently viewed items and featured recommendations, Select the department you want to search in, Reviewed in the United States on February 17, 2011. It also analyzes reviews to verify trustworthiness. Chapter 5, 'The "fine" Europe of towns and universities (thirteenth century)', revisits some of the areas most central to Le Goff's life work. The authors focus on Greek history and then move on to Rome. Concept Development Fill out the chart as we analyze these 3 types of art. Still,Price and Thonemann have an uncanny feel for evidence capable of appealingviscerally to modern, relatively well-informed civilians as neither arcane (thepointy-head specialist trapping us in the trees) nor cheap (the silver-tongued “intellectual”cultivating his public). New writers have new ways of looking at old subjects. In The Birth of Classical Europe, the latest entry in the much-acclaimed Penguin History of Europe, historians Simon Price and Peter Thonemann present a fresh perspective on classical culture in a book full of revelations about civilizations we thought we knew. Reviewed in the United States on February 3, 2017. The Birth of Classical Europe is a wonderful introduction to the ancient world. This page works best with JavaScript. This is the richest irony; as Price and Thonemann recountelsewhere, Alexander’s sixth-century forbearer needed a legal dispensation tocompete in the Pan-Hellenic Olympics since no one was convinced the tribal andking-ruled Macedonians were Greek, atleast in the way of the city-states. Shareable Link. Manythird-century Romans, locked in wars with Persia as interminable as America’sagainst “terror,” loudly said just that. At every level from languages to calendars to political systems, we are the descendants of a 'classical Europe', using frames of reference created by ancient Mediterra The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins 416pp, Bantam, £20. History of Europe - History of Europe - Chronology: Regardless of the loaded aesthetic, philological, moral, confessional, and philosophical origins of the term Middle Ages, the period it defines is important because it witnessed the emergence of a distinctive European civilization centred in a region that was on the periphery of ancient Mediterranean civilization. From calendars to democracy to the very languages we speak, Western civilization owes a debt to these classical societies. Reviewed in the United States on November 9, 2016. The influence of ancient Greece and Rome can be seen in every aspect of our lives. Jonathan Liu is a reviewer and journalist who has written for The New York Observer, Gawker.com, and The Harvard Book Review. Chapters 8, 9, and 10 cover the next great migrations—the Viking Diaspora and the movement of slavs and magyars into the areas once dominated by Germanic speakers and beyond to form the essential demography of Europe by about 1000 CE. This first book covers the beginnings of Western Civilization from the Trojan War to the time of Augustine of Hippo. About The Birth of Classical Europe. European literature emerges from world literature before the birth of Europe—during antiquity, whose classical languages are the heirs to the complex heritage of the Old World. There are thousands of books about the classical world so one might ask if we really need another. Indeed, the library model—the encyclopedia model—has, almostimperceptibly, inverted itself even as we continue using its metaphors: for thefirst time in the popular dispersal of knowledge, it is easier for the casualexplorer to reach the raw details, the material evidence, the internecinetheoretical squabbles and, yes, even the elaborately manicured fabrications,than any finite, authorized, and authoritative account. Of course there was, forbetter or worse, probably more of the raw “stuff” of history—written(and electronic) correspondence, commercial records, diplomatic “cables”—createdin the first month of 2011 than in the entire second millennium B.C. Reviewed in the United States on July 1, 2013. These two major civilizations form the precursors of the Greek one, and consequently, of what we consider the cradle of Classical Europe. Part of the emphasis seems to be on the beliefs of peoples of antiquity: what they perceived to be their own history and how it … I took a course recently on Ancient Greece and Rome, and this book was a great resource in evaluating and succinctly describing some of the most complex parts of Classical Europe. They were, in other words,as confused about themselves as we are about them—perhaps the grandesthistorical lesson of all. But they’d have quickly runup against the complications of history as argument—Rome’s millennium-oldfounding myth had the city settled by the Trojan,not the Achaean (Greek), survivors of the war. Despite the immense ground covered, there is no impression of the breathlessness and superficiality which one might have thought unavoidable. -- Simon Hornblower, TLS Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. I like the way the authors meld social, historical, literary, and artistic issues in a really engaging narrative style. Reviewed in the United States on August 25, 2020. Have read others in the series and they all have been a good investment of time. Like the best of their predecessors, Priceand Thonemann aren’t propagandists or court chroniclers, but actuallygracefully incorporate recent academic threads and theories—even Martin Bernal’soft-caricatured “Black Athena” hypothesis is given a fair hearing.Their genre, however, remains decidedly touristic and so, arguably, static: likethe Durants’ 11-volume The Story ofCivilization, say, or Churchill’s History of the English-Speaking Peoples (which Labour rival Clement Attlee piquantly renamed”Things in History that Interest Me”), the imagined audience is notthe budding scholar primed ultimately to make her own advances in the field,but the cosmopolitan and curious, moving up from the Encyclopedia Britannica. The detail historical events in the book are fascinating and necessary for understanding the history of Europe. seven centuries, geographically focusing on the Aegean region: Crete and parts of mainland Greece, the birthplaces of the Minoan and the Mycenaean palatial civilizations. The western world has long been fascinated by classical Greek and Roman... Free shipping over $10. In September 1997 Richard Dawkins allowed an Australian film crew into his Oxford home, only … This is the first in Penguin’s new series of European history and inexcusably they’re overwrought narrative failures. The chapter encompasses a period of ca. EMBED. An innovative and intriguing look at the foundations of Western civilization from two leading historians; the first volume in the Penguin History of Europe. The authors sometimes have a clear focus on what they want to tell. How do we know what we know about the Ancient World? Oneimagines the young man, otherwise schooled in engineering or poetry, readingEdward Gibbon before embarking on a career in colonial administration—or WillDurant before joining the State Department. To an extraordinary extent we continue to live in the shadow of the classical world. (His female companions were surelyhoning skills more crucial and less remunerative—French, say, or typing.) To even summarize such a complex set of movements would be to extend this review beyond its proper length. I really like this series of history books from Penguin. 5.0 out of 5 stars The Birth of Classical Europe - Excellent! The Birth of Classical Europe: A History from Troy to Augustine by Simon Price and Peter Thonemann. Disabling it will result in some disabled or missing features. (Neither isWikipedia, incidentally.) But the basic question with which this book is concerned is whether we can meaningfully describe this period as the 'birth' of Europe. Learn more. Reviewed in the United States on July 24, 2015. Thereis, in other words, a certain expansionist philosophy inherent in any attemptto capture 2000 years in 400 pages: that the world is both contingent and, forthe properly acculturated, coherent. A landmark achievement, "The Birth of Classical Europe"provides insight into an epoch that is both incredibly foreign and surprisingly familiar. The birth of classical Europe Item Preview remove-circle Share or Embed This Item. Launched in January 2001, Wikipediafinally emblematizes nothing less than a revolution for the armchair historian,the cultural dilettante (or polymath) of all kinds. Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis Used as a textbook for my Ancient World survey class. Still, these are appropriate endpoints. This first book helps to give a good, however brief start to a history of Europe. One might be tempted to conclude that Troy, across the Aegean onAsia Minor, became in the collective imaginary the ur-instance of that greatEuropean preoccupation: Occident vs. Orient, the West against the rest. Read 26 reviews from the world's largest community for readers. EMBED (for wordpress.com hosted blogs and archive.org item tags) Want more? The influence of ancient Greece and Rome can be seen in every aspect of our lives. RRP $46.99 Learn more Available on orders $80 to $2,000. The authors of this terrific history are willing to reveal the translation process from findings to speculations. The Birth of Classical Europe can look deep into the logistics of a war or a development in classical history. The 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth finds an agreeable tribute in the German television film “Louis van Beethoven,” available now on VOD. to A.D. 475,give or take—than its three much longer predecessors combined. Excellent Introduction to the Classical World, Reviewed in the United States on January 12, 2014. The data used is current and findings from just the past few years are referenced to support various hypotheses. That is a lot of ground to cover in only four hundred pages, and The Birth of Classical Europe barely skims the centuries of history. You can still see all customer reviews for the product. From calendars to democracy to the very languages we speak, Western civilization owes a debt to these … Our understanding of the past is constantly changing as new information is discovered. These books are good for beyond the beginner, and someone with a little more knowledge and understanding. See all details for The Birth of Classical Europe: A History from Troy to Augustine (The... © 1996-2020, Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates. The Birth of Classical Europe: A History from Troy to Augustine (The Penguin History of Europe). This iscertainly no replacement for actual scholarship—actual archaeology and philologyand dendrology—but it also represents more than a difference in scale, alongsome trajectory a real classicist might say started with the Library ofAlexandria. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Most of all as the world we live in changes we need new books to help us connect with a past that is constantly moving. The influence of ancient Greece and Rome can be seen in every aspect of our lives. After William ChesterJordan’s Europe in the High Middle Ages (2004), Chris Wickham’s The Inheritance of Rome:Illuminating the Dark Ages, 400­–1000 (2007),and Tim Blanning’s The Pursuit of Glory: Europe1648­–1815­ (2009)—Penguin’schronology is as confoundingly ad hoc as a Hulkor Superman film franchise—theseries now alights on the origin story, or “A History from Troy to Augustine.”Series editor David Cannadine is a scholar of the British Empire by trade (hewrote 2001’s clever and influential Ornamentalism), but his instincts as historiographical castingdirector appear as well acquitted to the haze of Pax Romana and its B.C.antecedents as they were to the more recent Peaces, of Westphalia and Vienna,which bookended Blanning’s well-received entry. This book offers insights into the ancient world that are not found elsewhere. I found the content of the book very informative and interesting. The Birth of Classical Europe, by Simon Price and Peter Thronemann is the first book in a series, The Penguin History of Europe. So Penguin was, in a way,exquisitely prescient when it set off, in the parlance of comic-book mythoswithout beginning or end, to “reboot” its Penguin History of Europe a decade ago. But The Birth of Classical Europe isn’t aformless cloud of facts and dates, without narrative or argument. After viewing product detail pages, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in. Top subscription boxes – right to your door. The Birth of Europe book. In such a world, theobvious defense of a volume like TheBirth of Classical Europe is the one that Britannica, for one, spent years plaintively raising againstWikipedia: namely, that average folk need, above all, not information but proportion—to know, as was famouslyargued, that Tony Blair deserves more words than Harry Potter, even if bothaccounts are exponentially more detailed and current than anything easilyavailable in print. The structure and writing is concise. Dr Isbell reasserts Staël's place in history and analyses her vast agenda, which covers every Classical and Romantic divide in art, philosophy, religion, and society from 1789 to 1815. They do not spend a lot of time on the civilizations of Mesopotamia, the Ancient Near East, and Egypt. According to Simon Price and Peter Thonemann's The Birth of Classical Europe, just … Reviewed in Canada on July 14, 2015. The Birth of Classical Europe: A History from Troy to Augustine by Simon Price and Peter Thonemann (Viking) An innovative and intriguing look at the foundations of Western civilization from two leading historians. The second half of Chapter 6, ‘The Later Huns and the Birth of Europe’, puts flesh on the bones of the key argument of the book by tracing the origins of European early med- ieval socio-political organisation and culture back to the steppes: absolute royal power, itinerant kingship, a ruling clan, divisions of territory among sons or relatives of the king, stratified ranking system for sub-kings, centralised feudalism, … At its core is indeed a “meta-narrative” asdefinitive and, in its way, as political as any of the discredited dogmas.Again and again, this Penguin history foregrounds the way their pasts, real and imagined, loomed in the individual psychesand collective consciousness of people who never knew themselves as “ancients.”Charmingly, Price and Thonemann make a running gag of provincial citieslobbying the metropole—Athens, or Macedon, or Rome—for privileges based on, asthe centuries wore on, ever more convoluted ethno-fraternal ties dating to theTrojan War. Perhaps the greatest tribute one can give Oxford classicists Simon Price and Peter Thonemann is that "The Birth of Classical Europe" reads nothing at all … What, after all, is the end of History—in the teleological,species-encompassing monotony of either classic liberalism or revolutionaryMarxism—but a return to the colorful history of maps and chaps,sects and infidels, great walls and defenestrations, the past as telenovela? They gave me riveting accounts of Athens’ rise to as a cultural and maritime power and its reverberations in the Persian and Peloponnesian w I’ve got mixed feelings about this book. The Birth of Classical Europe: A History from Troy to Augustine Save 50% on a BBC History Magazine or BBC History Revealed subscription Christopher Kelly examines an elegant tour through ancient Greek and Roman history that doesn’t wait for stragglers Use the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. 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