Odysseus Unbound

Extraordinary story of the exciting discovery of the true location of Odysseus' homeland of Ithaca.

Odysseus is one of the greatest heroes of Greek culture. Known for his cunning and intelligence, he was instrumental in helping the Greeks emerge victorious in the Trojan War. But it was his adventures after the ten-year war ended that inspired Homer to immortalize him in The Odyssey. The ancient Greeks felt a special kinship with Odysseus. While they admired physical prowess and respected courage and determination, they revered cunning and intelligence above all. Find out how Odysseus uses his brains and his brawn to fight a flesh-eating Cyclops; endure the Sirens' song, which lured sailors to their death; and outmaneuver deadly rocks that crushed ships trying to pass through them. Then see how he regains mastery in his kingdom when he returns to Ithaca and his queen, who has waited for him patiently for twenty years.

A BRILLIANT AND BEGUILING REIMAGINING OF ONE OF OUR GREATEST MYTHS BY A GIFTED YOUNG WRITER Zachary Mason's brilliant and beguiling debut novel, The Lost Books of the Odyssey, reimagines Homer's classic story of the hero Odysseus and his long journey home after the fall of Troy. With brilliant prose, terrific imagination, and dazzling literary skill, Mason creates alternative episodes, fragments, and revisions of Homer's original that taken together open up this classic Greek myth to endless reverberating interpretations. The Lost Books of the Odyssey is punctuated with great wit, beauty, and playfulness; it is a daring literary page-turner that marks the emergence of an extraordinary new talent.

The Enduring Importance of Leo Strauss takes on the crucial task of separating what is truly important in the work of Leo Strauss from the ephemeral politics associated with his school. Laurence Lampert focuses on exotericism: the use of artful rhetoric to simultaneously communicate a socially responsible message to the public at large and a more radical message of philosophic truth to a smaller, more intellectually inclined audience. Largely forgotten after the Enlightenment, exotericism, he shows, deeply informed Strauss both as a reader and as a philosophic writer—indeed, Lampert argues, Strauss learned from the finest practitioners of exoteric writing how to become one himself. Examining some of Strauss’s most important books and essays through this exoteric lens, Lampert reevaluates not only Strauss but the philosophers—from Plato to Halevi to Nietzsche—with whom Strauss most deeply engaged. Ultimately Lampert shows that Strauss’s famous distinction between ancient and modern thinkers is primarily rhetorical, one of the great examples of Strauss’s exoteric craft. Celebrating Strauss’s achievements while recognizing one main shortcoming—unlike Nietzsche, he failed to appreciate the ramifications of modern natural science for philosophy and its public presentation—Lampert illuminates Strauss as having even greater philosophic importance than we have thought before.

Designed as an introduction to classical mythology for middle and high-school students, presents retellings of favorite myths, sidebar summaries, and review exercises with the answers at the back of the book.

Profiling the most notable of the Mythological Kings of Greece

A fresh and exciting approach to this great work of classical literature, which brings it alive for today's students and gives them the tools to appreciate and explore the work themselves.

The Odyssey is vividly captured and beautifully paced in this swift and lucid new translation by acclaimed scholar and translator Peter Green. Accompanied by an illuminating introduction, maps, chapter summaries, a glossary, and explanatory notes, this is the ideal translation for both general readers and students to experience The Odyssey in all its glory. Green’s version, with its lyrical mastery and superb command of Greek, offers readers the opportunity to enjoy Homer’s epic tale of survival, temptation, betrayal, and vengeance with all of the verve and pathos of the original oral tradition.