It's All Greek to Me: From Homer to the Hippocratic Oath, How Ancient Greece Has Shaped Our World

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From Booklist Touring the literature of ancient Greece, Higgins, formerly a Guardian journalist on the arts beat, revels in her mission to introduce Homer, among others. Wryly if candidly describing her treatment as a “bluffer’s guide,” Higgins offers a companionable start on the monumental significance of the Greek classics, so if one can’t tell Sappho from Sophocles, this is the place to start. Higgins begins, however, with The Iliad and The Odyssey and shuttles between them throughout the volume as she alights on the topics of the gods, mortality, morality, love, war, politics, science, and women—the gamut of inquiry about human nature undertaken by the authors whose names resound through the ages, from Hesiod to Thucydides to Plato. Focused especially on the fifth century BCE, Higgins highlights the Persian Wars and the Peloponnesian War as the milieu of intellectual ferment in the Hellenic world and, in colloquial language, strives to inspire her audience to experience the pleasures Higgins does when she reads the classics. Populist, enthusiastic, and informed, Higgins can fan an ember of interest into a flame. --Gilbert Taylor Read more Review “Higgins delivers digestible précis and peppy plot summaries. . . . A love letter to ancient Greece.” (The Telegraph)“A highly entertaining bluffer’s guide to Greek culture, philosophy, and politics.” (Sunday Times (London))“With a marvellous display of knowledgeable enthusiasm and a keen talent for compression, (Higgins) shows just precisely why the Greeks matter.” (The Guardian)“Higgins takes on classical Greek, covering politics, barbarians, love, epic and ethics, all done with panache and sly wit.” (Scotland on Sunday)“Higgins’s sparky style makes her subject matter so palatable that… her readers may not feel the need to seek out the classics because she has distilled them all too well.” (Time Out London)“In It’s All Greek to Me, Charlotte Higgins does a great job in conveying the heart of Greek culture to a general audience. Perfect for the stocking.” (Mary Beard, History Today)“[It] is so readable, with a directness and clarity that’s enormously engaging. Every generation needs to rediscover the Greeks: and Charlotte Higgins has provided this one with a wonderful map of the territory and all kinds of help on the way. . . . What an excellent book.” (Phillip Pullman)“A completely excellent guide to Greek poetry, drama, philosophy, history and culture. Philip Pullman has said that he would put it into every school and every teacher-training course and I’d echo that. . . . Highly entertaining as well as informative.” (A.N. Wilson, Evening Standard) Read more See all Editorial Reviews