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Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey
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A major new collection from "arguably the most important intellectual alive" ( The New York Times). Noam Chomsky is universally accepted as one of the preeminent public intellectuals of the modern era. Over the past thirty years, broadly diverse audiences have gathered to attend his sold-out lectures. Now, in Understanding Power, Peter Mitchell and John Schoeffel have assembled the best of Chomsky's recent talks on the past, present, and future of the politics of power.
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Summary
In this graceful and sweeping addition to the Books that Changed the World series, Alberto Manguel traces the lineage of these epic poems. He considers their original purpose, either as allegory or record of history; surveys the challenges the pagan poems presented to the early Christian world; and traces their spread after the Reformation. Following Homer through the greatest literature ever created, Manguel's book above all delights in the poems themselves, the "primordial spring without which there would have been no culture".
Critic reviews
"Manguel is not only a gentleman and a scholar but a gentleman as a scholar, offering constellations of connected readings and insight with grace, humor, and tact." (The New Yorker)
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Overall

- Nelson Alexander
- 24-06-09
Some Things Just Don't Work in Audio
I have enjoyed this series of "biographies" of great books, but am abandoning this one after an hour, sorry to say. It may be a good work in print. But the combination of Manguel's elegant syntax and endless arcane asides together with a skilled but bloodless reading make it nearly impossible to follow or retain. It all becomes a refined, scholarly drone, with each sentence's subject forgotten by the time it arrives (slowly, tortuously) at the distant predicate. I don't blame the reader or writer exactly, but this one just doesn't work as an audio book.
7 of 8 people found this review helpful