Since its original publication by Little, Brown and Company in 1942, Edith Hamilton's Mythology has sold millions of copies throughout the world and established itself as a perennial bestseller in its various available formats. Mythology succeeds like no other audiobook in bringing to life for the modern reader the Greek, Roman, and Norse myths and legends that are the keystone of Western culture - the stories of gods and heroes that have inspired human creativity from antiquity to the present.
"What the Greeks discovered, how they brought a new world to birth out of the dark confusions of an old world that had crumbled away, is full of meaning for us today who have seen an old world swept away."
In The Greek Way, Edith Hamilton shares the fruits of her thorough study of Greek life and civilization, Greek literature, philosophy, and art. She interprets their meaning and brings us a realization of the refuge and strength the past can offer us in the troubled present. Miss Hamilton's book must take its place with the few interpretative volumes which are permanently rooted and profoundly alive in our literature.
"At last, a landmark recording of Hamilton's magnificent, in-depth overview of Greek life, civilization, literature, art, theater, rhetoric, and history, making this key work of cultural and critical significance available to the audio generation....This program is well read by Nadia May." -Library Journal
Edith Hamilton shows us Rome through the eyes of the Romans. Plautus and Terence, Cicero and Caesar, Catullus, Horace, Virgil, and Augustus come to life in their ambitions, their work, their loves and hates. In them we see reflected a picture of Roman life very different form that fixed in our minds through schoolroom days-and far livelier.
The Roman Way makes vividly interesting the contrast between Roman and Greek culture. Moreover, it reveals how surprisingly similar was Roman civilization to that of modern America-in respects ranging from an interest in good roads and good plumbing, to the popular veneration of home and mother. Our heritage from Rome includes everything from moral laws to stock characters in the drama. Skillful, witty, subtle in understanding, this book shows us what the Romans were like, how they lived, what they thought and accomplished.
"Fourth-century Athens has a special claim on our attention apart from the great men it produced," writes Hamilton, "for it is the prelude to the end of Greece. ...The kind of events that took place in the great free government of the ancient world may, by reason of unchanging human nature, be repeated in the modern world. The course that Athens followed can be to us not only a record of old unhappy far-off things, but a blueprint of what may happen again."
With the clarity and grace for which she is admired, Edith Hamilton writes of Plato and Aristotle, of Demosthenes and Alexander the Great, of the much-loved playwright Menander, of the Stoics, and finally, of Plutarch. She brings these figures vividly to life, not only placing them in the context of their own times, but also conveying very poignantly their meaning for our world today.
"The narrator's sincerity and expressiveness greatly enhance the author's characterizations and conclusions, and draw the listener in."-AudioFile
