10 books like The Last of the Wine

When most of us think about the 14th Century, we see it as a time of chivalry, knights, and crusades. It was anything but for most people who feared the ending of the world. It was everything that was with us still, whether corruption in high places or taxes. But it also had bankers, saints, mystics, and all the good and bad things that are with us today.  

I read Barbara Tuchman’s book over a period of two months. It was a wonderful read. Each chapter offers a glimpse of the events and happenings that shaped the world as we came to know it. If you’re interested in medieval Europe, the book is a wonderful gift. It is also a book of surprises. I was intrigued to learn that “people knew the world was a globe before Columbus, where “a man could go around the world as a fly… show more.

Not – repeat not – because I am its editor and wrote more than half of it but mainly because this is I believe the one-volume, one-stop-shop book to have on your shelves or digitally on your computer if you want to gain something like a complete understanding and appreciation of the world or rather worlds of Ancient Greece. I can do no better than quote from the ‘blurb’ provided online by the C.U.P. itself.

It is sumptuously illustrated throughout, almost entirely in colour. It offers fresh interpretations of the whole range of ‘Classical’ Greek culture, different aspects of which are expertly handled by members of an international cast of top-notch scholars both male and female. These aspects include: the influences of the environment and economy; the effects of interstate tensions; the implications of (bi-, homo-, hetero-normative) sexuality; the experiences of workers, soldiers, slaves, peasants and women; and the roles… show more.

The earliest and perhaps the greatest book about the psychology of war ever written. Perhaps nowhere in all of fiction is there a better description of a character who suffers trauma from violence, both in inflicting it and in receiving it, than Achilles. If you read no other, then read this.

Thucydides of Athens (c. 455-400 BC) was an Athenian aristocrat of supreme intelligence and a failed politician who turned his 20 years of political exile to excellent account by turning himself into the most acute analyst and historian of the great Atheno-Peloponnesian War of 431 to 404. Thucydides was born within the world’s first democratic political state but was out of sympathy with the rule of the majority, the masses – except when they themselves were kept in check and did what they were advised by a superior statesman of the unique calibre of Pericles (c. 493-429).

Thucydides outlived the end of that War, which was a major defeat ultimately for his own home city by the Spartans aided financially by the old enemy, the Persians. But he did not live long enough to complete his History, which breaks off in mid-sentence in what we call the summer of 411… show more.

Davidson demonstrates that sexual relationships with courtesans and youths in ancient Athens paralleled the markets in other luxuries such as fish and wine rather more than resembling the modern ideal of romantic love. In a society where marriages were mainly business arrangements made between families to ensure the production of legitimate heirs to their estates, such formal relationships were frequently loveless. This led the male partners and those as yet unmarried to resort to employing mistresses, courtesans, and youths as luxurious distractions from the mundane matter of marital maintenance of the bloodline.

Herodotus is a joy to read. In his Enquiries into the heroic struggle of Greece against the mighty Persian Empire, he wanted to preserve the memory of wondrous deeds. And he does it brilliantly. Along the way we discover how to catch a crocodile in Egypt, visit the walls of Babylon, and travel with the fearsome, gender-fluid, Scythian warriors. As the massed Persian armies with their arrogant and manipulative commanders bear down on the divided state of Greece, we are taken to battlefield of Marathon, witness the tenacious heroism of the 300 Spartans, and fight on the sea at the great Greek victory at Salamis. This epic conflict between the forces and ideals of East and West is rendered beautifully in Tom Holland’s fluent translation, which nimbly walks the line between accuracy and accessibility.

From the moment Xeones uttered his first line, “I had always wondered what it felt like to die,” I was hooked.

Ancient Sparta is brought to life through the characters of this book. We see their motivations, their training, their society, and what, in essence, makes them Spartans. Xeones isn’t a native Spartan, but his admiration for their society and his devotion to his comrades-in-arms makes him the ideal choice to tell their story.

This book had so many things I like in a good novel: history, life-like characters with great arcs, action, and quotable lines.

I have always been fascinated by the Far East, so when James Clavell published Shōgun, I was enthralled throughout all its many pages. It allowed me to delve into the mysteries of that island nation, so isolated by location and culture from the world I knew.

Years later that fascination was further enriched when I went to work for a Japanese motor vehicle company. My department shared a work area with the Japanese representatives stationed in South Africa for 2 to 3 years, so I was able to build some form of relationship with them. When I visited Japan on business I was privileged to enjoy that culture firsthand, albeit it much removed from the Japan of the Shōgun era. The bonus was to be exposed to slices of Japanese life not usually accessible to the average visitor.

Who knew that the emperor Nero appointed an Advisor on Tastefulness, who also penned a bawdy and gritty novel about the adventures of several friends in the Roman Empire in the 1st century AD? Fairly few, and the even more surprising fact is that hundreds of pages of his text survive today. You can still read either in Latin or in English translation about two young men proposing to fight for the affections of the youth Giton and you can join them all in a visit to an archetypal Roman brothel. There is nothing else remaining that provides a more direct and authentic insight into daily experiences and relationships in ancient Rome.

It’s impossible to enter the mindset of the ancient Greeks without understanding that democracy runs deeply in their cultural bloodstream. There are numerous books on the subject – I did a course called Athenian Democracy: An Experiment for the Ages for The Great Courses – but Cartledge’s book, as the title suggests, offers a biography from its beginnings down to the present day. It also provides a nuanced exploration of the connection between Greek politics and society. Democracy: A Life depicts democracy not as a theoretical model but at work, and, in the challenges it faces today, a work in progress. Get A Life!