As you read, you will find yourself looking around at the complex systems with which we interact every day, and thinking either a) there's a lot of maintenance going on behind the scenes we don't normally notice, or b) it's astonishing they don't require more maintenance.
Assyria Review
As Frahm points out, the Assyrian Empire is as much a part of our cultural heritage as the Greeks, though they receive far less attention for their contributions.
Esther Review
Alternatively, we could treat it as it is, without worrying too much about what we cannot know about it, and read Esther as a brief chronicle of a peculiar incident in the history of the relationship between the Jews and the Achaemenids.
The Forme of Cury Review
After being forced to scroll past dozens of nearly identical, overly sappy stories on various food blogs in order to reach anything relevant about the recipe, I decided to go old school and instead picked up a cookbook from the fourteenth century.
Elements of Eloquence Review
For breaking down rhetorical figures, showing them in use, and highlighting how they appear and affect the reader, Elements of Eloquence is a valuable primer and reminder.
Ezra Review
The Persian kings are depicted as rescuers of the Jewish people from their Babylonian captivity, and Ezra-Nehemiah include multiple letters and other documents, supposedly based on actual writings, in which the Persian rulers support, encourage, and fund the restoration of the Jewish people and the rebuilding of the temple.
The Ode Less Travelled Review
If you do it properly, you will produce poetry from reading this book. Not good poetry, necessarily, not something you labor over for days and intend to publish to immortalize your name as the next great poet of the 21st century, but poetry nonetheless.
Chronicles Review
Chronicles is to Kings what The Lord of the Rings books are to the movies - different interpretations with different emphases, but ultimately telling the same story.
The Maya Myths Review
Matsumoto's retellings of Maya mythological stories are more like plot summaries than any effort to really capture the feel and emotional context of the myths and stories involved. If writing down an oral story robs it of life, she gives us only the bones, not even the full corpse.
Avtandil’s Quest Review
If you were intrigued by my review for The Knight in the Panther’s Skin, but struggled with reading English translations of Rustavelian quatrains, Buell’s retelling is an excellent opportunity to approach the story in a different way.
