Description: With enormous range and delight, classicist Goldhill lifts the veil on the modern inheritance of classical traditions and reveals the Greek and Roman roots of everything from the mania for "hard bodies" to political systems.
Brief description: Simon Goldhill is professor of Greek and the director of the Centre for Research in Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities at the University of Cambridge.
Review Quotes: "Love, Sex & Tragedy is great, and great fun, the kind of book you find yourself reading out to your other half as you go along-a sparkling, erudite, and amusing remedy for our collective historical amnesia, a book that persuasively argues that without an understanding of our classical roots we are stumbling in the dark, missing vital information about who we really are and why we do the things we do. What do we mean by democracy? Why and how do we mix up history and myth and at what price? Whom do we love and how? Which bodies do we want and why? How do we entertain ourselves, and to distract us from what horrors? Simon Goldhill forces us to examine what we increasingly ignore: our radical reliance on a history we barely know."--Zadie Smith (6/21/2004 12:00:00 AM)