Showing results by narrator "Charlton Griffin" in All Categories

No nation has ever achieved the literary diversity of America. From nativist humor to immigrant triumph, Americans have recorded their visions and hopes better than anyone

Nicolaus of Damascus was a Hellenized Jewish scholar who lived contemporaneously with Octavius and lived to see him become Caesar Augustus. The work itself takes us through young Octavius’ life and shows how he was carefully brought up and eventually adopted by his uncle, Julius Caesar. But what is remarkable about this short biography is the care and detail with which Nicolaus goes about in describing the plot and assassination of Caesar. The aftermath of Caesar’s murder is explained quite clearly as Octavian steps up to claim his uncle’s inheritance.

This is the story of John Ridd, a yeoman farmer of the border country in southwest England. Set in the turbulent late 17th century, amid political tensions aroused by the religious animosities of a nation that had just emerged from the Commonwealth government of Cromwell, the story follows the adventures of John Ridd and his love, Lorna Doone, an aristocratic beauty who was kidnapped by the Doone family as a child. How John Ridd meets Lorna, wins her love, rescues her from the clutches of the Doone clan, and tries to keep her safe constitutes the bulk of the plot.

This is the story of Margaret Hale, a young English woman who accompanies her family's move from rural southern England to the industrial north. It proves to be a difficult change, with all the attendant social conflicts and cultural misunderstandings consequent to such situations. It is a study in contrasts. Mrs. Gaskell created one of the Victorian era's greatest heroines in Margaret Hale, a young lady of passionate intensity.

The Persian Wars is part history, part geography, part anthropology...and completely entertaining. It possesses a charm that is legendary. However, over and above this, Herodotus has succeeded for all time in brilliantly expressing the conflict between the ideal of the free man defending his liberty within a state based on the rule of law, and that of the despot who bases his rule on brute force and whose subjects are considered slaves.

Whenever the subject of Lincoln is brought up, it usually produces a mixed response ranging from adoration to excoriation. Back in 1931 when Lincoln the Man appeared, there were few willing to publicly judge Lincoln on the basis of anything less than hagiographic platitudes. That all changed when the famous poet and writer Edgar Lee Masters published Lincoln the Man. This book is less a biography and more of an analysis of Lincoln’s thinking process and political evolution from backwoods lawyer to president of the United States.

The Secret Agent was one of the first espionage novels ever written, and it is certainly one of the finest in the oeuvre of Joseph Conrad. The story concerns the attempt by a group of back-alley revolutionaries to destroy one of London's most famous landmarks and thereby set off a revolution.

From the death of Louis XIV in 1715 until the onset of the French Revolution in 1789, there occurred a profound evolution in the thinking of political philosophers, whose epoch is known as The Enlightenment. There were three men whose writings were to be most responsible for this intellectual whirlwind: Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau.

Roanoke Hundred is an historical novel about the very first attempt to found an English colony in North America in 1585. Although it is a fictional account, the story is based on the letters, diaries, and archives of the period. Every character is based on a real person. The entire adventure centers around one of England’s greatest heroes, Sir Richard Grenville. Grenville was lord of the manors of Stowe, Kilkhampton in Cornwall, and of Bideford in Devon. He was also a soldier, an armed merchant fleet owner, privateer, colonizer, and explorer.

A History of Greece continues with the bitter struggle between Sparta and Athens for mastery of the Hellenic world. Though Sparta finally emerges victorious, her victory soon turns to ashes with the ascendancy of Thebes and the still greater power of Philip of Macedon. Philip unites an unwilling Greece with his iron policy. Athens gives up her independence, but maintains an aloof intellectual and artistic leadership in the Greek world.

The Rider on the White Horse is one of the most beautiful stories to emerge from 19th century Germany, as well as being one of the most romantic and most tragic. In this short masterpiece, set in the middle of the 18th century in North Friesland, Theodor Storm exhibits a man's will in conflict with unintelligent conservatism among his fellow men on one side, and with the forces of nature on the other. The figure of dikemaster Hauke Haien emerges from this struggle in starkly outlined character.

Acclaimed as "the first citizen of Athens", Pericles was one of the greatest statesmen ancient Greece ever produced. During the Golden Age of Athens, in the much admired 5th century B.C., Pericles epitomized the influential politician. But he was also a brilliant orator and military leader brought up in the competitive environment of Greek democracy.

Vanity Fair is a satirical novel of manners which takes place during, and in the decade after, the battle of Waterloo in 1815. The various scenes in the novel range across Europe and England. It was first published in serial form beginning in 1847. The work is by turns witty, scintillating, brutally realistic, tragic, humorous, and always fascinating. The title of the book stems from Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress”, where Vanity is a town along the pilgrim’s route, and which holds an eternal fair of the vanities. It is a place where people are ensnared by worldly things.

Spartacus is one of the most unusual historical novels of the 20th century and certainly one of the most realistic. In a whirlwind of savagery, despair, and desperation, the listener is suddenly and violently plunged into the great Roman slave revolt of 73 BC. The author, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, does not waste time by slowly setting up his characters, nor in leisurely describing domestic scenes. From the first word, you are literally hurled into the frenetic life of an escaped Greek slave by the name of Kleon.

Mandell Creighton (1843-1901) was an English historian, bishop, and scholar, best known for his work on the history of the Papacy and the Renaissance. Born in Carlisle, England, he studied at Oxford, where he later became a fellow and tutor. Creighton was a meticulous historian who emphasized the importance of understanding historical figures in their context, avoiding anachronistic judgments. He was admired for his intellectual rigor and ability to balance academic and ecclesiastical duties. He was universally mourned at his death in 1901.

In his Poetics, Aristotle puts forward that everything we create is a kind of imitation of life, merely using different types of media, objects and manners, whether painting, music, or language. We shape the images, sounds or words to make some particular point and tell a unique story. But if you want an audience to respond to what you have to say, whatever you create must be connected logically to the real world. The rules of doing this successfully are laid out in Poetics.

When the Muslims swept out of the Arabian peninsula in the eighth century, one of the first areas to fall under their power was the Holy Land; it was an event that would have long term consequences for three distinct civilizations.

At the beginning of the 16th century, a religious revolution shattered the outward appearance of conformity among Europe's Roman Catholics...a conformity that had been the basis of Western European unity for over a thousand years. Why did it happen? In this brilliant history, Professor Mosse exposes the crisis of the Papacy in preceeding centuries and shows how the need for reform was continually being delayed until it was simply too late.

Trying to squeeze an entire history of Chinese civilization into a brief, one volume account is a formidable task, but one that has succeeded brilliantly here. Hilda Hookham has provided us with a concise story that, while not getting too entangled with personalities and cultural issues, manages to navigate the swirling passage of events that comprise over 3,000 years of Chinese political history.

If ever a catharsis in Western European Civilization occurred, it had to have been the period we refer to as the Renaissance. After a thousand years of theocracy, manorialism, feudalism and narrow economic development, Europe was ripe for change. She got it with a vengeance.