Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
consumption and consummation - with wine, women,
boys and seafood - in Classical Athens.
Ì Paul Cartledge The Spartans: The World of the
Warrior-Heroes of Ancient Greece . Reassessment of this
much-maligned city-state, secretive and a source of
outsider speculation even in its own time.
Ì M.I. Finley The World of Odysseus . Reprint of a 1954
warhorse, pioneering in its investigation of the historicity
(or not) of the events and society related by Homer. Breezily
readable and stimulating.
Simon Hornblower The Greek World 479-323 BC . An
erudite, up-to-date survey of ancient Greece at its zenith,
from the end of the Persian Wars to the death of Alexander.
Mary Lefkowitz Greek Gods, Human Lives: What We Can
Learn from Myths . Rather than being frivolous, immoral or
irrelevant, ancient religion and its myths, in their bleak
indifference of the gods to human suffering, are shown as
being more “grown up” than the later creeds of salvation
and comfort.
Oswyn Murray Early Greece . The story of Greece from the
Minoans and Mycenaeans through to the beginning of the
Classical period.
Robin Osborne Greece in the Making 1200-479 BC . Well-
illustrated paperback on the rise of the city-state.
Robin Lane Fox Alexander the Great . Another absorbing
study, mixing historical scholarship with imaginative
psychological detail.
F.W. Walbank The Hellenistic World . Greece under the
sway of the Macedonian and Roman empires.
MEDIEVAL AND MODERN HISTORY
Timothy Boatswain and Colin Nicolson A Traveller's
History of Greece . Well-written overview of crucial Greek
periods and personalities, from earliest times to the end of
the twentieth century.
Ì Richard Clogg A Concise History of Greece . If you read
only one title on “modern” Greek history, this should be it: a
remarkably clear account, from the decline of Byzantium to
2000, with numerous maps and feature captions to the
well-chosen artwork.
C.M. Woodhouse Modern Greece: A Short History .
Woodhouse was a key liaison officer with the Greek
Resistance during World War II, and later a Conservative MP.
Writing from a more right-wing perspective than Clogg, his
account - from the foundation of Constantinople to 1990
- is briefer and drier, but scrupulous with facts.
INDEPENDENT GREECE
Ì John S. Koliopoulos and Thanos M. Veremis
Greece : The Modern Sequel, from 1831 to the Present .
Thematic rather than chronological study that pokes into
corners rarely illuminated by conventional histories;
especially good on Macedonian issues, brigandage and the
Communists.
David Brewer The Flame of Freedom: The Greek War of
Independence 1821-1833 (o/p). The finest narrative of
revolutionary events (with some black-and-white
illustrations), strong on the background of Ottoman Greece
as well as the progress of the war.
Ì Michael Llewellyn Smith Ionian Vision: Greece in
Asia Minor, 1919-22 . Still the best work on the disastrous
Anatolian campaign, which led to the population
exchanges between Greece and Turkey.
BYZANTINE, MEDIEVAL AND OTTOMAN
GREECE
David Brewer Greece, the Hidden Centuries: Turkish Rule
from the Fall of Constantinople to Greek Independence .
Readable yet authoritative history of this little-explored
era of Greek history.
Nicholas Cheetham Medieval Greece (o/p). A general
survey of the period's infinite convolutions in Greece, with
Frankish, Catalan, Venetian, Byzantine and Ottoman
struggles for power.
Ì John Julius Norwich Byzantium: The Early Centuries ;
Byzantium: the Apogee and Byzantium: The Decline . Perhaps
the main surprise for first-time travellers to Greece is the
fascination of its Byzantine monuments. This is an
astonishingly detailed yet readable - often witty - trilogy
of the empire that produced them. There's also an excellent,
one-volume abridged version, A Short History of Byzantium .
Ì Roger Crowley Constantinople: The Last Great Siege,
1453 . Thrillingly readable narrative of perhaps the key
event of the Middle Ages, and its repercussions throughout
Europe and the Islamic world.
WORLD WAR II AND THE CIVIL WAR
Ì David H. Close The Origins of the Greek Civil War .
Excellent, even-handed study that focuses on the social
conditions in 1920s and 1930s Greece that made the
country so ripe for conflict; draws on primary sources to
overturn various received wisdoms.
Nicholas Gage Eleni . Controversial account by a Greek-
born New York Times correspondent who returns to Epirus
to avenge the death of his mother, condemned by an ELAS
tribunal in 1948. Good descriptions of village life, but the
book has its agenda and its political “history” is at best
selective.
Iakovos Kambanellis, translated by Gail Holst-
Warhaft Mauthausen . Kambanellis was active in the
Resistance, caught, and sent to Mauthausen, a
concentration camp for politicians or partisans who
opposed the Nazis' rise to power. Harrowing atrocities in
lashback there are aplenty, but the topic dwells equally on
post-liberation, as the initially idealist inmates realize that
the “New World Order” will be scarcely different from the
 
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