Should the ancient Greeks - the oldest dead white European males - and their legacy have any relevance to the way we live now? So much of what the ancients were and did may now appear positively racist and sexist in this era of multiculturalism.

With advice and informative readings of the great Greek texts, this title shows how we might save classics and the Greeks. It is suitable for those who agree that knowledge of classics acquaints us with the beauty and perils of our own culture.

Linked by the events of Bernard Knox's remarkable life, the twenty-five chapters of "Essays Ancient and Modern" cover subjects ranging from Hesiod, Homer, and Thucydides to Auden, Forster, and the Spanish Civil War. With a masterful eye for the telling detail, Knox continually reminds us that we share the present with antiquity's living past. A soldier in Italy finds a battered book in the rubble of a bombed-out firehouse-- and opens it to read Virgil's denunciation of war. An illiterate Greek bard composes a garbled Homeric song to celebrate the recent heroism of local partisans. A traveler heading north from modern Athens must choose between the Sacred Way-- or the NATO Road.

Who has brought the world of ancient Greece and Rome to life for the uninitiated reader and scholar alike.

Founders, classics, and canons have been vitally important in helping to frame sociology's identity. Within the academy today, a number of positionsfeminist, postmodernist, postcolonialquestion the status of "tradition."In Founders, Classics, Canons, Peter Baehr defends the continuing importance of sociology's classics and traditions in a university education. Baehr offers arguments against interpreting, defending, and attacking sociology's great texts and authors in terms of founders and canons. He demonstrates why, in logical and historical terms, discourses and traditions cannot actually be "founded" and why the term "founder" has little explanatory content. Equally, he takes issue with the notion of "canon" and argues that the analogy between the theological canon and sociological classic texts, though seductive, is mistaken.Although he questions the uses to which the concepts of founder, classic, and canon have been put, Baehr is not dismissive. On the contrary, he seeks to understand the value and meaning these concepts have for the people who employ them in the cultural battle to affirm or attack the liberal university tradition.

A wide range of sources - by writers, diplomats, tourists, businessmen, and missionaries - documenting the political, cultural and social history of Japan from 1400 to the 20th century.

A collection of non-specialist essays on Cambridge University's 'contribution' to certain key disciplines.