Sailing the wine-dark sea

"In Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea, his latest bestselling work of popular history, Thomas Cahill escorts the reader on another entertaining-and historically unassailable-journey through the landmarks of art and bloodshed that defined Greek culture nearly three millennia ago. In ancient Greece, honors could be won in making love and war, and lives were rife with contradictions. By developing the alphabet, the Greeks empowered the reader and encouraged civil discussion--yet they kept slaves. The glorious verses of the Iliad suggest that their "bellicose society of gleaming metals and rattling weapons" is not so very distant from more recent campaigns of "shock and awe." And, centuries before Zorba, Greece was a land where music, dance, and wine were essential to the high life. Granting equal time to the sacred and the profane, Cahill rivets our attention to the legacies of an ancient and enduring worldview."