Review
"'Her fascinating new book does a consummate job' Tom Holland, Mail on Sunday (5 stars) 'Ambitious, illuminating and witty' Lucy Hughes-Hallett, Sunday Times 'insightful account of how the archaeological ruins of Mycenae have been interpreted and misinterpreted to fit contemporary cultural agenda.' THES 'A wide-ranging and often surprising fulfilment of the book's title, namely a search for a hero.' Minerva Magazine"
Product Description
From Homer to Himmler, from Thucydides to Freud, Mycenae has occupied a singular place in the western imagination. Gere takes us from the Cult of the Hero that sprung up in the shadow of the great burned walls in the eighth century BC, to Agamemnon's twentieth-century reincarnation as an Aryan military genius and to the distinctly anti-heroic conclusions of modern archaeology. The Wonders of the World is a series of books that focuses on some of the world's most famous sites or monuments. Their names will be familiar to almost everyone: they have achieved iconic stature and are loaded with a fair amount of mythological baggage. These monuments have been the subject of many books over the centuries, but our aim, through the skill and stature of the writers, is to get something much more enlightening, stimulating, even controversial, than straightforward histories or guides.
About the Author
Cathy Gere is a lecturer in the History of Science at the University of Chicago. She has published on a wide range of topics from witchcraft to brain banking. Her book on Knossos in Crete is forthcoming.
