Category: Classics and Life

“Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics is one of the greatest guides to human flourishing ever written, but its length and style have left many readers languishing. How to Flourish is a carefully abridged version of the entire work in a highly readable and colloquial new translation by Susan Sauvé Meyer that makes Aristotle’s timeless insights about how to lead a good…

A philosopher asks how ancient Stoicism can help us flourish today (publisher’s blurb) “This is a lucid, engaging, and persuasive book about what it means to pursue Stoic ideals in the here and now. Massimo Pigliucci’s imaginary conversations with Epictetus carry the reader effortlessly along while grounding the discussion firmly in the ancient Stoic tradition–and…

“Can jokes win a hostile room, a hopeless argument, or even an election? You bet they can, according to Cicero, and he knew what he was talking about. One of Rome’s greatest politicians, speakers, and lawyers, Cicero was also reputedly one of antiquity’s funniest people. After he was elected commander-in-chief and head of state, his…

“‘Have you identified and actualised your unique potential?’” asks Professor Edith Hall. No, she isn’t trying to sign you up to her new management course, she’s introducing you to the philosophy of Aristotle. Her new self-help-cum-philosophy book, Aristotle’s Way, is mostly a distillation of the ten books of the ancient Greek philosopher’s Nicomachean Ethics with…

“Mary Norris’s Greek to Me is one of the most satisfying accounts of a great passion that I have ever read. It traces a decades-long obsession with Greece: its language (both modern and ancient), literature, mythologies, people, places, food and monuments — all with an absorption that never falters and never squanders the reader’s attention.…

In How Much the Heart Can Hold, seven definitions of love, most of them from ancient Greek, are explored by seven writers. “The Greek tragedies, those stories of darkness and obsession and revenge, resonate because we’re living in dark times and these are dark stories” (Sarah Hughes, The Guardian).

“In this thoroughly engaging book, Natalie Haynes brings her scholarship and wit to the most fascinating true stories of the ancient world. The Ancient Guide to Modern Life not only reveals the origins of our culture in areas including philosophy, politics, language, and art, it also draws illuminating connections between antiquity and our present time,…

“Taking as his starting point many of the famous tourist sites in the Peloponnese, where the stories are set, John Spurling…freshly imagines key narratives from the Greek canon” in Arcadian Nights: Greek Myths Reimagined. “In this vibrant, gripping and often grisly retelling of the Greek myths, stories of murder, power, revenge, love, and traumatic family…

Living with a Dead Language: My Romance with Latin is “[a]n entertaining exploration of the richness and relevance of the Latin language and literature, and an inspiring account of finding renewed purpose through learning something new and challenging. After thirty-five years as a book editor in New York City, Ann Patty stopped working and moved…

The Senecans, an “unconventional account of the Margaret Thatcher years by a former editor of the Times of London mixes reminiscence, gossip, and classical philosophy. As a political journalist in the nineteen-eighties, [Peter] Stothard formed a wary friendship with four mid-level members of Thatcher’s “court,” whom he presents as “mirrors, each reflecting different aspects of…