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9780674055636

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Wry and imaginative, this gem of a book deconstructs the most famous building in Western history. Beard, probably Britain's best-known classicist, elucidates . . . the history of the ancient building, the functions—church, mosque, barracks, ammunition dump—it has served since antiquity, and the place it has held in the European imagination in the modern era. With éclat she dashes most of what we think we know about the ancient Greeks' building . . . Beard reveals just how alien . . . the classical Greeks are to us, and just how little we know about them. -- Benjamin Schwarz * The Atlantic * With painstaking attention to detail and a fair-minded view of centuries-old controversies, Mary Beard delivers a brief, but thorough, and surprisingly readable history of what is arguably the world's most famous building . . . [A] fine job of storytelling . . . describing changes on the site from a modern tourist's perspective. -- Stephen H. Morgan * Boston Globe * In her brief but compendious volume [Beard] says that the more we find out about this mysterious structure, the less we know. Her book is especially valuable because it is up to date on the restoration the Parthenon has been undergoing since 1986. -- Garry Wills * New York Review of Books * The Parthenon is an excellent and concise guide to one of the most famous structures in the world. Mary Beard takes readers on a journey, at once historical, anthropological, and archaeological, that is both thorough and good-naturedly humorous. -- Rachel Wallace * Sacramento Book Review *

Wry and imaginative, this gem of a book deconstructs the most famous building in Western history. Beard, probably Britain’s best-known classicist, elucidates…the history of the ancient building, the functions—church, mosque, barracks, ammunition dump—it has served since antiquity, and the place it has held in the European imagination in the modern era. With éclat she dashes most of what we think we know about the ancient Greeks’ building… Beard reveals just how alien…the classical Greeks are to us, and just how little we know about them. -- Benjamin Schwarz * The Atlantic * With painstaking attention to detail and a fair-minded view of centuries-old controversies, Mary Beard delivers a brief, but thorough, and surprisingly readable history of what is arguably the world’s most famous building… [A] fine job of storytelling…describing changes on the site from a modern tourist’s perspective. -- Stephen H. Morgan * Boston Globe * In her brief but compendious volume [Beard] says that the more we find out about this mysterious structure, the less we know. Her book is especially valuable because it is up to date on the restoration the Parthenon has been undergoing since 1986. -- Garry Wills * New York Review of Books * The Parthenon is an excellent and concise guide to one of the most famous structures in the world. Mary Beard takes readers on a journey, at once historical, anthropological, and archaeological, that is both thorough and good-naturedly humorous. -- Rachel Wallace * Sacramento Book Review *

Author Information

Mary Beard has a Chair of Classics at Cambridge and is a Fellow of Newnham College. She is classics editor of The Times Literary Supplement and author of the blog “A Don’s Life.” She is also a winner of the 2008 Wolfson History Prize.

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