Författarbild
12 verk 359 medlemmar 33 recensioner

Serier

Verk av Nicholas Nicastro

Isle of Stone (2005) 89 exemplar
Empire of Ashes (2004) 87 exemplar
Antigone's Wake (2007) 20 exemplar
Ella Maud (2018) 7 exemplar
Hell's Half-Acre: A Novel (2015) 4 exemplar
The Passion of the Ripper (2019) 3 exemplar
The River Through Rome (2021) 2 exemplar
L'impero di cenere 1 exemplar

Taggad

Allmänna fakta

Födelsedag
1963
Kön
male
Nationalitet
USA

Medlemmar

Recensioner

More like 3.5. An engineer, Nonius, is tasked by Agrippa to bring water to a slum section of the Sebura, a "red-light district", without demolishing any of the houses there. He becomes infatuated with a concubine of a senator who is blocking the completion of his task. He is distracted by her, and also by the senator's wife, and goes to court to prove his lady love, Amaris, is freeborn. Because Agrippa feels he is not the man for the job, he is taken off it, and his foreman is put in charge. The foreman, Byzantus turns out to be inept and he is reinstated. Amaris reveals her true feelings for Nonius when he mentions marriage. I really didn't understand Amaris' psyche except maybe her selfishness and really, that of many of the characters showing the same emotion; the "river through Rome" being desire, which all characters exhibited in one way or another.
I thought the story about putting in the feeder pipes interesting, as well as the descriptions of Rome, but I really disliked the pages and pages of very graphic descriptions of sex and the gruesomeness of the one character's gelding. I did like the last few pages, with the ending. Recommended with reservations.
… (mer)
½
 
Flaggad
janerawoof | Dec 30, 2023 |
¡Vuelve con tu escudo, o sobre él!, les gritaban las mujeres espartanas a sus hombres al partir a la guerra. Y los hombres obedecían, las líneas de guerreros orgullosos, el muro de escudos entrelazados, las afiladas lanzas de cara al enemigo. Un enemigo que, la mayoría de las veces, huía aterrado al primer vistazo de las imponentes filas espartanas. Así había ocurrido batalla tras batalla hasta ahora, hasta Esfacteria.
Ésta es la historia de la primera rendición de los espartanos. Del día en que entregaron las armas al enemigo y cambiaron su honor por su vida. Del día en que, en definitiva, dejaron de ser más que humanos y se convirtieron en simples hombres.… (mer)
 
Flaggad
Natt90 | 4 andra recensioner | Mar 20, 2023 |
From the beginning, this is a fascinating book. Switching times and perspectives keeps you focussed and interested, and even when this is a true crime story, the whole truth only is apparent at the end.

I particularly liked how the author also takes his time to present the social changes taking form at the end of the century, the way the media can take a flimsy fact and construct a whole narrative with the power of destroying lives, the effect of guilt in people...

It's evident through the whole book how thoughtfully the author researched all the facts, and when we add a very engaging writing we end with a book worth your time.… (mer)
 
Flaggad
Claudia_M | Oct 27, 2018 |
More like 3.5. Fascinating and educational for a layperson like me, but I felt it was bloated. Yes, Eratosthenes was covered--even with the sketchy information on his life from the Suda [the Byzantine encyclopedia] and what his conclusions on geodesy--shape of the earth and its circumference--were and how he reached them. The earth as a globe was only one out of several theories current at that time. It was amazing that he reached pretty accurate conclusions using only primitive surveying techniques of that time and his knowledge of geometry--no trigonometry tables back then. But the book was swollen was tangential information such as: the Hellenistic society in Alexandria of his time and its exhaustive description; the Ptolemaic dynasty; The Museum and Great Library in Alexandria; how knowledge of the ancients was lost [much through the vandalism of Christian zealots who I'd compare to the present-day Taliban or to ISIS rampaging through the ruins of Palmyra] and finally recovered, some through the Arab scholars, some on palimpsests, and some through references in other writings that have come down to us.

I feel this readable book could have been condensed into a volume half its size. Interesting to me was the fact that Columbus knew the world was round, BUT he underestimated the size of its circumference. Also interesting was the fact that his successor at the Great Library, Aristophanes of Byzantium, was the man who first developed a system of diacritics used in the Greek language; they are still used today in Modern Greek in a simpler form. The author closes with a metaphor: as the Eratosthenes Mountain Range 6000 feet undersea, Eratosthenes the man has remained obscure to us.

Recommended for popular science fans.
… (mer)
½
 
Flaggad
janerawoof | 21 andra recensioner | Aug 31, 2015 |

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Statistik

Verk
12
Medlemmar
359
Popularitet
#66,805
Betyg
½ 3.5
Recensioner
33
ISBN
22
Språk
2

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