To Hellas and Back

When Lana and Dion head to Athens, they have no idea what lies in wait. Dion has been offered the job of the century, while Lana chases a sabbatical involving sun, sea and sand. But while the gods couldn’t have been kinder, this is one travel adventure that does not go according to plan.

Lana finds it difficult to articulate beyond pointing and snorting. She acquires towering hairstyles and discovers solace only through tweezering her leg hair. Meanwhile, Dion is having the time of his life, embracing his Greek ancestry, and slipping further from Lana’s grasp just when she needs him the most.

Welcome to a cross-cultural love story with all the trimmings: a big, fat Greek wedding, a son-worshipping mother-in-law, a fast-crumbling psyche and an unexpected ending.

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How the greeks created western civilization

How the greeks created western civilization

Bruce Thornton

In the classics departments of today’s universities, Bruce Thornton says, the Greeks are accused of stealing their achievements from black Egyptians, of oppressing their wives and daughters, and of hypocritically speculating about freedom while holding slaves. Most of all, classic Greek culture has come under attack precisely because its glorious achievement, extended into history, is what defines the West and makes it distinct. In Greek Ways, Thornton clears away these misconceptions. Writing with wit and erudition, he discusses in fascinating detail those areas of Greek life - sexuality and sexual roles; slavery and war; philosophy and politics - that some modern critics have made into “contested sites.” Perhaps more importantly, he also reclaims the importance of those core ideas the Greeks invented, ideas about human fate and purpose that have shaped the modern world. Nearly seventy years ago, Edith Hamilton published The Greek Way, a book that educated two generations of readers about the debt we owe the handful of city-states that developed “the spirit of the West” some 2500 years ago. Bruce Thornton’s Greek Ways is for our time what Hamilton’s book was for a prior era: a classic inquiry holding up a mirror to Greek culture in which we can see ourselves.

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What Germany Owes Greece

What Germany Owe Greece

The Forgotten Revolution

In the age of Archimedes and Euclid (third century BC) science as we know it was born, and gave rise to sophisticated technology that would not be seen again until the 18th century.

The scientific revolution was accompanied by great changes in many other fields, such as art and medicine. What were the landmarks of this enormous cultural shift? Why are they so little known today? How do they relate to the post -1500 science that we are familiar with? what led to the end of ancient science? These are the questions that this book discusses, in the belief that the answers bear on choices we face today.

This book is comparable simultaneously to a sensational archaelogical discovery and an important scientific theory.

Marcello Cini, physicist, University of Rome

The book is among a handful of truly marvelously written books in the field of early science ... and it was accordingly a great success with the italian public. The community of historians of mathematics should be greatful to Russo for this achievement (...).

Reviel Netz, classicist, Stanford University

This is an important book and it is [to be] hoped that historians, both of science and of general history, take notice of it.

Heinrich Guggenheimer, review in Zentralblatt fur Mathematik

...a comprehensive and in-depth review of Hellenistic science. ...Thenovelty of [its] conclusions is such that one might be tempted to react with plain disbelief ... The reader should, however, avoid such reaction, because the scholarly support is unquestionably impressive. Thanks to his dual copetence in science and philology, Russo does away with a time-honored habit - namely, that humanists deal only with "literary" sources and historians of science with "scientific" ones.

Sandro Graffi, review in Notices of the American Mathematical Society

Russo's book is bound to stir up a discussion among historians of science!

Hendrik Lenstra, UC Berkeley and Universiteit Leiden