Of all the great civilizations of the ancient world, that of Persia is one of the least understood. Josef Wiesehöfer's comprehensive survey of the Persian Empire under the Achaeminids, the Parthians, and the Sasanians focuses on the primary Persian sources--written, archaeological, and numismatic. He avoids the traditional Western approach which has tended to rely heavily on inaccurate Greek and Roman accounts. Part of the freshness of this book comes from its Near Eastern perspective.
This series takes a historical look at the ancient world's leading figures, who led armies to victory and ruled over vast domains in a time when the world was still young. As one empire fell, another would rise, led by charismatic and powerful commanders who could unite many people and were touched by greatness. This king of Macedonia claimed to be descended from the gods, and in his 33 years he achieved amazing conquests and explored lands previously unknown to Westerners.
The Hairy Ape - A Comedy of Ancient and Modern Life
The play tells the story of a brutish, unthinking laborer known as Yank, as he searches for a sense of belonging in a world controlled by the rich. O'Neill himself acknowledged that The Hairy Ape straddles a number of styles. "It seems to run the gamut from extreme naturalism to extreme expressionism—with more of the latter than the former," he wrote in 1921. The initial response to productions of The Hairy Ape focused on the skill of the play's staging and its forceful impact on a viewer.
Ancient Rome: From Romulus and Remus to the Visigoth Invasion
Echoes of ancient Roman concepts of governance, law, and society still ring throughout the world today. A stranger to neither war nor wealth, ancient Rome was shaped as much by strife as it was by prosperity. The expansion of the Roman Empire was buoyed by this culture's tendency to embrace traditions of its newly assimilated peoples, making Rome a cradle of endless and enduring possibilities. The history of an exceptional empire is recounted in this sweeping volume.
Integrating the results of scholarly work from the past decade, the authors of An Introduction to the Ancient World, Lukas de Blois and R.J. van der Spek, have fully-updated and revised all sixteen chapters of this best-selling introductory textbook. Covering the history and culture of the ancient Near East, Greece and Rome within the framework of a short narrative history of events, this book offers an easily readable, integrated overview for students of history, classics, archaeology and philosophy, whether at college, at undergraduate level or among the wider reading public.
