A Traveller's History of Greece (Traveller's Histories Series)

Rating:
Summary: Required Reading Before Your Trip to Greece
Review: 25 years out of college, and I was desperate to find a summary of Greek History before my trip without having to re-read Homer, Herodotus and Thucydides! This is a very easy, if concentrated read. The even pace and focused chapters helps you to remember the pertinent facts and sequence of events. I never really understood how Macedonia, the Roman Empire, Byzantium, Crusades, Venetians, and Ottoman/Turks were tied together, but at least I have a basic understanding now, and why Turkey and Greece are always at odds.

I suppose in order to condense the length of the 1st half of the book, Boatswain leaves out most information about the relationship of history and Greek Mythology (their religion), and focuses on the train of events only.

Some actual photos of famous people, especially in Nicolson's second half describing recent 20th Century history would have helped rather than the cheesy drawings. Also, there is no glossary for the second half, making it difficult to review the meaning of political group abbreviations (PASOK, ERM, EOKA, EAM, KKE, ELAS, etc.)or people's names if you forget who they are (i.e, you have to go back through the book).

For the difficult task the book sets out to do (getting you to remember 4,000 years of Greek History in a painless and entertaining manner) it does a great job. I also felt Boatswain and Nicolson made a clear and successful effort to be as neutral and objective as possible. I usually dislike history books, but found myself fascinated by it all.

Rating:
Summary: Useful for the traveler
Review: This book should prove quite useful for those traveling to Greece, whether the trip is still in the planning stage or even if it has already been done and the traveler wants to enrich his or her experience with some background information. It is clearly intended for the non-specialist but contains a few insights I had not found in more learned volumes. The style and tone are crisp and fast-paced throughout. The first part, by Boatswain (120 pages), goes from very early Greek civilization to the fall of Constantinople. Normally, this would be too few pages for so much material, but the author does an adequate job, considering his purpose. The second part, by Nicolson, takes us to the end of the twentieth century. I must admit to a bit of disappointment with Boatswain's treatment of the world of Hellenism. He gets all the facts right but wobbles on the spirit of the Hellenistic -- as distinct from the Hellenic. But this is not a real flaw since few historians bother to elaborate on the distinction. Recommended for travelers and for general readers.

Rating:
Summary: A concise history lesson perfect for travellers
Review: This was the first Greek history book that I read and was interesting enough to both be read in a single sitting and spur my interest to further study Greek history. It's format is of a general, sweeping political overview with the more dramatic points (Pelo. War, War of Independence, the Greek Civil War) covered in detail, while other eras are glossed over in just a handful of pages (Byzantium, Roman occupation).

There's a detectable populist-sympathetic slant that is detectible especially in the last third of the book, but such sentiment probably more accurately reflects the Greece that the traveller will find today than Ancient Athens.

More academic treatments can be found by Richard Clogg in 'A Concise History of Greece' and the sadly out-of-print 'Modern Greece' by C.M. Woodhouse.

Rating:
Summary: A concise history lesson perfect for travellers
Review: This was the first Greek history book that I read and was interesting enough to both be read in a single sitting and spur my interest to further study Greek history. It's format is of a general, sweeping political overview with the more dramatic points (Pelo. War, War of Independence, the Greek Civil War) covered in detail, while other eras are glossed over in just a handful of pages (Byzantium, Roman occupation).

There's a detectable populist-sympathetic slant that is detectible especially in the last third of the book, but such sentiment probably more accurately reflects the Greece that the traveller will find today than Ancient Athens.

More academic treatments can be found by Richard Clogg in 'A Concise History of Greece' and the sadly out-of-print 'Modern Greece' by C.M. Woodhouse.

Rating:
Summary: The book plods but the information is there
Review: To most people, Greece means the Greece of the Classics--the Parthenon, Delphi, Homer, Crete, and the Greek Islands. Modern Greece means tavernas, retsina, dancing a la Zorba, Greek Orthodox icons, and maybe the memory of Byron. But that leaves a lot of Greek history out of the mix, and it's impossible to truly appreciate the country as it is today without understanding all the centuries in between.

"A Traveller's History of Greece" condenses these several thousand years of history into a manageable size book . It's divided into two parts, the first, covering early Greece through Byzantium, was written by Boatswain, and the second, which brings the history up to the present, by Nicolson. The pace is fairly brisk, a necessity considering the scope of the work, and there are occasional maps, black and white drawings, and a detailed time line at the end of the book. The information it provides is definitely useful--and vital for understanding of Greece as it exists today.

So--why did I give the book only three stars? To be honest, I found it uninspired. The history was there, all right, but most of the time it seemed to be history of the "this happened and then that and then so-and-so did this" variety. Except for occasional glimmers of insight, I didn't find much cultural depth. I was listening to a set of taped lectures on Classical Greece by "The Learning Company" at the same time as I was reading this book., and frankly the tapes gave me a better understanding of the period they covered than did this book.

That's a shame, but it's less of a problem for Classicalal Greek history, since there are lots of other easily accessible resources. For the later periods, however, that's not the case. At the time I picked this book up (it was recommended reading before a tour to Greece), there wasn't much else available that covered the later periods as well as the earlier. In talking with the tour leaders (one an eminent archaeologist), it became apparent that their reactions were similar to mine--and that this book it was about the only game in town What's really needed is a cultural history of the post-Classical centuries to supplement this political history. But, until that comes along, I too will recommend this book.