Genealogy Books - The Histories (Penguin Classics)

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Summary: "Call No Man Happy Until He Is Dead" - Herodotus
Comment: Well, Herodotus didn't say it, but he's famous for relating Solon's words to Croesus in this book--
and many other words besides. Everyone should read this look at a world long dead, brought
gloriously alive by the brilliant Herodotus. If you've never taken "the long view" before, you'll
soon see that a lot went on before you were born (and a lot, no doubt, is yet to happen).
Civilizations created and conquered, Gods worshipped and forgotten-- it reads like fiction or
fantasy, but it is not: it's as close as Herodotus could get to telling the absolute truth as he saw
it (and he saw a lot).

Some "classics" are hard to slog through and appreciate. This
is not one of them. Read! Enjoy!

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Summary: This read was an unexpected pleasure!
Comment: Although he wasn't there, you would never know it from his writings. He has anecdotes about all the
major figures of the Persian War, and his descriptions of the people and places are convincing
although he places a Greek bias to them.

He writes with clarity, with wit, with irony,
and in an enjoyable manner that is missing from most of the historians in the popular press today.
He can't believe that boulders or snakes were set upon by the gods, any more than intelligent people
today think that earthquakes and hurricanes were a result of devine intervention either.
/>That the Romans and the Christians intervention in the affairs of mankind represented a
two-thousand year loss in the intellectual capabilities of human development is obvious when one
realizes that between Herodotus and the past few hundred years there was no one who could understand
and analyze human activities like he did.

And have the Persians changed . . not one
bit. They are still slaves, devoid of will, beholden to cruel and arbitrary tyrants of their own
making.

This read was an unexpected pleasure!

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Summary: Iran
Comment: This book has Greek bias toward ancient Iranian history. This book is lacking balance view toward
ancient Iranian historical figures.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Awesome
Comment: If you can get into the groove of this book and read it as if it were as interesting and fast paced
as these new movies that come out, you are in for a great time.

Herodotus is called
"The Father of History", but this book shows that he also sowed the first seeds of Anthropology.

If you pay attention while reading this book, you will certainly read some interesting
things. I think that it was interesting to read about Scythians smoking marijuana 2500 years ago, or
about how certain hallowed monks lived in the Himalayas with Yeti...

The Persian
invasion is amazing to read just because Greece was a pimple on a map, and they some sort of way
managed to resist the strongest empire that the world had seen up to that point.

This
book is great fun =)

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Summary: The Classic
Comment: Few things are eternal. One is this translation and text.

Herodotus (born 490-480 BC in
Halicarnassus - modern Bodrum) opens with "In this book, as a result of my inquiries into history, I
hope to do two things: to preserve the memory of the past by putting on record the astonishing
achievements both of our own and of the Asiatic peoples; secondly and more particularly, to show how
the two races came into conflict."

This was an ambitious goal, given the crisis of
Persian invasions that resulted in the haphazard and ultimately heroic unification of Hellenes for a
brief period against Persian `barbarians.'

The text proceeds innocuously as if a 5C BC
travel guide replete with gossip and speculation on everything known to the author. This is
invaluable as a contemporary view of the ancient world. But the conclusion (from Book Seven) is
unique and as riveting as the most popular fiction.

Herodotus, like Homer and
Thucydides, is a foundation of civilization as we know it.

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