The fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453 marked the end of a thousand years of the Christian Roman Empire. Thereafter, world civilisation began a process of radical change. The West came to identify itself as Europe; the Russians were set on the path of autocracy; the Ottomans were transformed into a world power while the Greeks were left exiles in their own land. The loss of Constantinople created a void. How that void was to be filled is the subject of this book.Michael...

An account of the ancient battle between Persia and the alliance of Greek city-states, including the legendary "300 Spartans."In 480 BCE, Persian king Xerxes led a massive invasion of Greece. A critical point in this invasion was the battle for the pass at Thermopylae—"Hot Gates" in Greek. Xerxes had amassed one of the largest armies yet known to man, while Leonidas's troops, a group of united Spartans, Thespians, Thebans, and others, including slaves, were a small ...

Throughout history, every power that has aspired to dominate the Balkans, a crucial crossroads between Europe, Asia, and Africa, has sought to control Macedonia. But although Macedonia has figured prominently in history, its name was largely absent from the historical stage, representing only a disputed territory of indeterminate boundaries, until the nineteenth century. Successive invaders— Roman, Gothic, Hun, Slav, Ottoman— passed through or subjugated the area and incorporated it into t...

Greece: A Short History of a Long Story presents a comprehensive overview of the history of Greece by exploring the continuity of Greek culture from its Neolithic origins to the modern era.Tells the story of Greece through individual personalities that inhabited various periods in the lengthy sweep of Greek historyUses an approach based on recent research that includes DNA analysis and analyses of archaeological materialsExplores ways in which the...

First published in 1994 to a storm of controversy, Thanassis Valtinos’s probing novel Orthokostá defied standard interpretations of the Greek Civil War. Through the documentary-style testimonies of multiple narrators, among them the previously unheard voices of right-wing collaborationists, Valtinos provides a powerful, nuanced interpretation of events during the later years of Nazi occupation and the early stages of the nation’s Civil War. His fictionalized chronicle gives partic...

This book is a review, by Stephanos Pesmazoglou, on Artemis Cooper's biography of Patrick Leigh Fermor, who epitomised the double love affair with England and Greece for the whole period since the late 1930s from the late 1930s until his death in 2011. Additional suspense is provided by his leading the small group that captured General Kreipe, the newly arrived commander of German troops on Crete, which is the book’s centre of gravity. It is A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man who chos...

House Ascendantpresents the comings-of-age of the epic hero and his best friend by homeland Greece; theyre both famous from The Odyssey by Homer, although the book assumes our readers have not the least knowledge of them. So, accordingly, from Odysseus birth while under the care of his mother Anticleia our volume tells settings and tales about Odysseus as a boy. He meets Mentor while theyre both lads at war campaign with their fathers, both acting as messengers unt...

When in 1821, the Greeks rose in violent revolution against the rule of the Ottoman Turks, waves of sympathy spread across Western Europe and the United States. More than a thousand volunteers set out to fight for the cause. The Philhellenes, whether they set out to recreate the Athens of Pericles, start a new crusade, or make money out of a war, all felt that Greece had unique claim on the sympathy of the world. As Lord Byron wrote, "I dreamed that Greece might still be Free"; and he died...

In "The Three Golden Apples," Nathaniel Hawthorne weaves a rich tapestry of myth and morality, encapsulating timeless themes through the lens of classical storytelling. This enchanting tale, part of his larger work "A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys," draws upon ancient Greek mythology, particularly the story of the golden apples of the Hesperides. Hawthorne's lyrical prose and imaginative style captivate readers, blending adventure with profound moral lessons, as the characters grapple wit...

Is the facts of the bible trustworthy? The latest work by Jared William Carter shows that the bible is trustworthy and its writers were inspired by Greece in Bible History and the accurate perdiction of Alexander the Great's death.

Touted as the "Jerusalem of the Balkans," the Mediterranean port city of Salonica (Thessaloniki) was once home to the largest Sephardic Jewish community in the world. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the city's incorporation into Greece in 1912 provoked a major upheaval that compelled Salonica's Jews to reimagine their community and status as citizens of a nation-state. Jewish Salonica is the first book to tell the story of this tumultuous transition through the voices and p...

Citizenship and the Nation State in Greece and Turkey brings together papers on a transdisciplinary dialogue on nation formation in Greece and Turkey as successor states of the Ottoman Empire, and on aspects of civil society in the two countries.The volume is divided into two parts: 'Empire and Nation-State' and 'Nation and Civil Society' and covers issues such as Turkish and Greek nationalism, the formation of the Greek State, the impact of the Greek War of Independence i...