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I am Professor of Classics at George Mason University. I learned about ancient Romans and Greeks in my native Germany, when I attended a humanist high school, possibly the oldest in the country. (It was founded during the reign of Charlemagne, as the eastern half of the Roman Empire was still flourishing.) My mother once informed me that I betrayed my passion for stories long before I could read because I enthusiastically used to tear pages out of books. In my teens I became fascinated with stories told in moving images. I have been a bibliophile and, em, cinemaniac ever since and have pursued both my obsessions in my publications.
An American journalist, expelled from Italy in 1925, traces roots, rise, and rule ofIl Duce in this 1935 book, which is as vivid as its title.
Mussolini appears as a cheap showman, who, “acting the Hero,” revived ancient Roman pomp and spectacles. He was also aware of the power of mass media, especially the cinema, “posing before men and moviemen.”
One of the virtues of Seldes’ book are the extensive quotations, which unmask Mussolini and others in their own words. Fascist documents, quoted at length, include “The Fascist Decalogue” (note its VIII. Commandment!) and the “Fascist Catechism,” which must be read to be (dis)believed.
Seldes’ book has become valuable again in the current age of assorted domestic and foreign media- and image-obsessed demagogues, autocrats, and dictators.
I am Professor of Classics at George Mason University. I learned about ancient Romans and Greeks in my native Germany, when I attended a humanist high school, possibly the oldest in the country. (It was founded during the reign of Charlemagne, as the eastern half of the Roman Empire was still flourishing.) My mother once informed me that I betrayed my passion for stories long before I could read because I enthusiastically used to tear pages out of books. In my teens I became fascinated with stories told in moving images. I have been a bibliophile and, em, cinemaniac ever since and have pursued both my obsessions in my publications.
Solomon’s gargantuan tome is a labor of love, offering a comprehensive tribute to General Lew Wallace’s epic historical novelBen-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, from 1880.
Solomon traces its genesis, composition (during which Wallace, previously not a devout believer, saw the light), publication, and sensational worldwide impact in all manner of modern media, which even included Ben-His and Ben-Hers towels.
After stage adaptations with thrilling on-stage chariot races, the cinema took over. The appropriately big MGM production of 1959 can boast what was for decades believed to be the most spectacular action sequence ever filmed. In a nod to contemporary politics, an Arab sheik puts a Star of David on Ben-Hur just before the race. And the film’s Romans closely resemble Nazis—not for the first or last time.
Ben-Hur was the first literary blockbuster to generate multiple and hugely profitable adaptations, highlighted by the 1959 film that won a record-setting 11 Oscars. General Lew Wallace's book was spun off into dozens of popular publications and media productions, becoming a veritable commercial brand name that earned tens of millions of dollars.
Ben-Hur: The Original Blockbuster surveys the Ben-Hur phenomenon's unprecedented range and extraordinary endurance: various editions, spin-off publications, stage productions, movies, comic books, radio plays, and retail products were successfully marketed and sold from the 1880s and throughout the twentieth century. Today Ben-Hur Live is touring Europe and Asia,…
I am Professor of Classics at George Mason University. I learned about ancient Romans and Greeks in my native Germany, when I attended a humanist high school, possibly the oldest in the country. (It was founded during the reign of Charlemagne, as the eastern half of the Roman Empire was still flourishing.) My mother once informed me that I betrayed my passion for stories long before I could read because I enthusiastically used to tear pages out of books. In my teens I became fascinated with stories told in moving images. I have been a bibliophile and, em, cinemaniac ever since and have pursued both my obsessions in my publications.
Fast ran afoul of the House Committee on Un-American Activities and was sent to prison for contempt of Congress.
To him, as to Karl Marx and others, the gladiator Spartacus, who led history’s best-known slave revolt (73 to 71 B.C.), symbolized the proletariat’s revolution against capitalist oppressors and depraved imperialists.
Despite some dubious history and one distasteful distortion concerning the Romans’ exploitation of slaves, Fast’s 1951 novel is a stirring tale, intended “so that the dream of Spartacus may come to be in our own time.”
When no publisher would touch his book, Fast had it printed and distributed on his own.
The screenplay for Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation was by Dalton Trumbo, another HUAC victim. His screen credits for Spartacusand, a little earlier, for Exodusended the blacklist.
I am Professor of Classics at George Mason University. I learned about ancient Romans and Greeks in my native Germany, when I attended a humanist high school, possibly the oldest in the country. (It was founded during the reign of Charlemagne, as the eastern half of the Roman Empire was still flourishing.) My mother once informed me that I betrayed my passion for stories long before I could read because I enthusiastically used to tear pages out of books. In my teens I became fascinated with stories told in moving images. I have been a bibliophile and, em, cinemaniac ever since and have pursued both my obsessions in my publications.
Richards’ book broadens the perspective advanced here with a concise overview of American and British films and some American-European co-productions about ancient Greek, Roman, biblical, and other cultures.
Its main focus is on the 1950s and 1960s, when epic filmmaking reached its height with color and widescreen cinematography, giant sets, huge casts, stereophonic sound, extreme lengths, and ruinous costs.
Richards rides to the rescue of several less-than-stellar films but can be severe as well, e.g. about 300: “probably the most Fascistic film to come out in cinemas since the fall of the Third Reich.” (No argument here.)
A few inaccuracies concerning antiquity and cinematic details detract from the book’s value, but they are instructive, since errors can create new fictions from the fictions that films invariably create from history.
This book offers a new, full analysis of the Ancient World epic and how this film genre continues to comment on modern-day issues.Few genres have been subject to such critical scorn as the Ancient World epic. Yet they have regularly achieved huge box office success. This book tells the history of the Ancient World epic from the silent screen successes of "Intolerance" and "The King of Kings" through the 'golden age of the epic' in the 1950s (Quo Vadis, Ben-Hur, Spartacus, Cleopatra etc) through to the 1990s revival with "Gladiator", its successors in cinema (Alexander, Troy, 300) and on television…
I have a fascination for Roman history, having been born in the UK, and visiting Hadrian’s Wall. I have read many, many works of both history and historical fiction about Rome. To me, these five are the most memorable. Obviously the story has to be fantastic but it's important to be accurate. The opening battle in Gladiator annoyed me because the Romans never broke lines to fight man to man with barbarians. The concept of the Celts living among the rubble of the Empire, of being surrounded by things they cannot understand helped inspire my Empire Of Bones series. I even have a gladius sword and use it to inspire my own battle scenes.
This is the first of the fantastic Macro and Cato series, this sees the bookish Cato drafted into the army under the gruff and tough Macro. Against all odds, this unlikely pair become both friends and an unstoppable team. There’s plenty of humour mixed in with the battles and you identify easily with Cato’s attempts to fit in and become a soldier.
IF YOU DON'T KNOW SIMON SCARROW, YOU DON'T KNOW ROME!
UNDER THE EAGLE is the gripping first novel in Simon Scarrow's bestselling EAGLES OF THE EMPIRE series. A must read for fans of Bernard Cornwell and Conn Iggulden. Praise for Simon Scarrow's compelling novels: 'Gripping and moving' The Times
AD 42, Germany. Tough, brutal and unforgiving. That's how new recruit Cato is finding life in the Roman Second Legion. He may have contacts in high places, but he could really use a friend amongst his fellow soldiers right now.
Cato has been promoted above his comrades at the order of…
They say that we begin by imitating what we love and find our personal themes in the process, and that’s certainly been true for me. I grew up reading horror and fantasy and now I write realistic fiction with something deeper and darker always throbbing under the surface. My subjects can be contemporary, like Nightmare, with Angel or The Spirit Box, but I’ve had some of my biggest critical successes with historical fiction. I’ve had parallel career paths in books and TV, each often crossing with the other, but it’s in the novels and short stories that you’ll find me uniquely invested.
This book arrived in the avalanche of volumes that descended on my house the year I agreed to join the judging panel for the World Fantasy Awards, and for me it shone out. The story’s told by Hans Schneider, who kills a fellow student when a duel goes wrong and ends up working in a low-rent asylum. There he meets the mysterious Dr. Lavenza and joins him in a mission to locate Victor Frankenstein’s formula for eternal life. It’s written with style and wit and a great sense of period. I felt so strongly about the lack of a paperback edition that I later offered to create one for the Brooligan Press. And for the avoidance of doubt, I don’t make a penny from its sales!
Hans Schneider is a drunkard and a womaniser; everyone agrees he’s heading for a bad end. When he kills a fellow student in a duel, he finds himself banished to an isolated rural hospital, far from the pleasures he desires. There he meets the mysterious Dr Lavenza, and learns about Frankenstein’s prescription—the secret of eternal life. Together, Schneider and Lavenza set out to collect the missing pieces of the formula. But they are not alone. From Germany to Rome, from Rome to Paris, to the failed and wretched Eden of an all-too-human God, a dreadful creature follows in their wake,…
Hallgrimur Helgason is an Icelandic artist and writer born in Reykjavik in 1959. He started out as a painter but then also took up writing. Since 1990 he has published eleven novels, the most well-known being 101 Reykjavik, which was turned into a popular film, The Hitman’s Guide to Housecleaning, and The Woman at 1000°. Helgason has also published 4 books of poetry and is an active political columnist. His books have been translated into 14 languages and three of them have been nominated for the Nordic Prize of Literature. Helgason won the Icelandic Literature Prize three times. In 2020 he was awarded the French medal Officier de l’ordre des arts et des lettres.
Germans have been in love with Italy since always, a love that found its culmination with Goethe’s famous Italienische Reise in 1816. It’s a love that lasts forever, for it’s a love that never finds fulfillment. Germans are like the stuffed up straight guy who’s in love with a lively beauty above their level, that is Italy; they’re forever stuck in the moment of enchantment, they can never grasp or really fathom their love, let alone turn it into a real affair or just begin to understand this incredible woman. Promising young German writer Strauss takes up residence in the famous Via Corso in Rome (close to Casa di Goethe), and tries to make his moment come alive under the heavy burden of history. Maybe not as urgent or dramatic as the other four books, but still here we have a one man-boy against all of Rome, all of our…
Ein Sommer in Rom Ein junger Mann kommt in die ewige Stadt, um die Gegenwart abzuschtteln. Er sucht einen eigenen Weg, fhlt fremde Zeiten in sich leben. In Rom erinnert er sich. In Rom verliebt er sich. In Rom trauert er. Er trifft auf auergewhnliche Menschen und findet seine Aufgabe: Alles wahrnehmen, nichts auslassen. Rmische Tage fhrt zu den vielen Anfngen und Enden unserer Welt und fragt, was wir morgen daraus machen. Der Erzhler zieht in eine Wohnung schrg gegenber der Casa di Goethe und die Stadt wird ihm zur Geliebten. Ihre Geschichten spielen vor seinem Auge: Der Mord an…
I am Professor of Modern European History at the University of Southampton, UK, and publish widely on diverse aspects of Nazi Germany. The first history book that I ever read was Alan Bullock’s Hitler. A Study in Tyranny - the first scholarly biography of Hitler to appear. I still recall the fascination of reading this as a teenager: it sparked a curiosity that formed the basis of a scholarly career that has spanned nearly three decades. The desire to make sense of the phenomenon of Nazism was never purely academic, however – my own family origins in Germany, and the stories elderly relatives told of their wartime experiences, gave the history texture, immediacy, and urgency.
As in the case of Joachim Fest, it is impossible to read this book without having some sense of the author’s own autobiography. Haffner was an emigré who had left Germany for Britain in 1939, was briefly interned in the war, and became a correspondent for The Observer. The essayistic reflections offered in this short book are not so much biographical as a set of attempts to place Hitler within the wider context of German history and to understand Hitler as a historical phenomenon. Readable, astute, and thoughtful, they are an engaging introduction to his life-long attempts to make sense of the regime from which he had fled.
This is a remarkable historical and psychological examination of the enigma of Adolf Hitler-who he was, how he wielded power, and why he was destined to fail.
Beginning with Hitler's early life, Sebastian Haffner probes the historical, political, and emotional forces that molded his character. In examining the inhumanity of a man for whom politics became a substitute for life, he discusses Hitler's bizarre relationships with women, his arrested psychological development, his ideological misconceptions, his growing obsession with racial extermination, and the murderous rages of his distorted mind. Finally, Haffner confronts the most disturbing question of all: Could another Hitler…
I am Professor of Modern European History at the University of Southampton, UK, and publish widely on diverse aspects of Nazi Germany. The first history book that I ever read was Alan Bullock’s Hitler. A Study in Tyranny - the first scholarly biography of Hitler to appear. I still recall the fascination of reading this as a teenager: it sparked a curiosity that formed the basis of a scholarly career that has spanned nearly three decades. The desire to make sense of the phenomenon of Nazism was never purely academic, however – my own family origins in Germany, and the stories elderly relatives told of their wartime experiences, gave the history texture, immediacy, and urgency.
In my view, this is the most readable and persuasive of a number of new biographical treatments that have appeared recently. In terms of interpretation, largely Ullrich confirms the line offered in an older two-volume biography, the equally magisterial account by Ian Kershaw published at the turn of the century. Like Kershaw, Ullrich is concerned to explain Hitler’s power in terms of charismatic authority, and not just dictatorial terror. But whereas Kershaw was of the view that Hitler had comparatively little personal hinterland, foregrounding instead his career as a public figure, Ullrich pulls out a remarkable range of often tiny, seemingly insignificant personal details or anecdotes to generate a compelling view of Hitler’s own interior landscape – it is all the more impressive for the fact that he uses this to explain better Hitler’s political outlook and actions.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • This landmark biography of Hitler puts an emphasis on the man himself: his personality, his temperament, and his beliefs.
“[A] fascinating Shakespearean parable about how the confluence of circumstance, chance, a ruthless individual and the willful blindness of others can transform a country — and, in Hitler’s case, lead to an unimaginable nightmare for the world.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
Volker Ullrich's Hitler, the first in a two-volume biography, has changed the way scholars and laypeople alike understand the man who has become the personification of evil. Drawing on previously unseen papers and…
Unlike most children of immigrants who were told nothing about the past, I grew up surrounded by family history—my grandfather’s village in Russia, my father’s memories of 1930s Europe, and my mother’s childhood on a migrant worker farm during the Great Depression. I realized that history isn’t just names and dates but a unique opportunity to study human behavior. I wrote Hammer of the Gods about the Thule Society because Thule was often mentioned in passing by historians of Nazi Germany, as if they were uncomfortable delving into an occult group recognized as influential on the Nazis. I decided I wanted to learn who they were and what they wanted.
There have been more recent accounts of Hitler’s retreat to the bunker in the last weeks of his life. But even if some new information has surfaced since Britain’s H.R. Trevor-Roper wrote his report, the vividness is hard to match. Trever-Roper recorded his thoughts on Hitler’s end before the rubble of war had been cleared away. It was almost on-the-scene reporting.
Late in 1945, Hugh Trevor-Roper was appointed by the British Intelligence to investigate the conflicting evidence surrounding Hitler's final days. The author, who had access to American counterintelligence files and to German prisoners, focuses on the last ten days of Hitler's life, April 20-29, 1945, in the underground bunker in Berlin.
