Lords of the Sea

You'd have to be half asleep already not to become hooked by the first few paragraphs of John Hale's Lords of the Sea - The Cleveland Plain Dealer Hale's simple but vigorous sentences prick up your ears from the first page...one hopes to hear more from him. -Dwight Garner, The New York Times With something for almost everyone, Lords of the Sea tells an important story and imparts to him who wants to learn important lessons. It's well worth the read. -Washington Times Dr. Hale's sparkling creation, that rare history so brilliantly told that, like the Athenian democracy, it is truly for all people. - Louisville Courier-Journal Historian and archeologist Hale brings both skill sets to bear in this account of an Athens whose golden age and democratic institutions depended on its navy. - Publishers Weekly You''d have to be half asleep already not to become hooked by the first few paragraphs of John Hale's Lords of the Sea - The Cleveland Plain Dealer Hale's simple but vigorous sentences prick up your ears from the first page...one hopes to hear more from him. -Dwight Garner, The New York Times With something for almost everyone, Lords of the Sea tells an important story and imparts to him who wants to learn important lessons. It's well worth the read. -Washington Times Dr. Hale's sparkling creation, that rare history so brilliantly told that, like the Athenian democracy, it is truly for all people. - Louisville Courier-Journal Historian and archeologist Hale brings both skill sets to bear in this account of an Athens whose golden age and democratic institutions depended on its navy. - Publishers Weekly aNobody knows more about the history of oared ships around the world than John Hale, and he combines with it a knowledge of and love for the ancient Athenians that helps explain their achievement. To provide a new angle from which to view and understand the experience of the Athenians of the Classical age is a remarkable feat, but Lords of the Sea accomplishes just that. The writing is utterly captivating and makes the reader feel he is back in ancient Athens among the great poets, historians, sculptors, architects, soldiers and sailors, all of whom were connected in important ways to the Athenian navy.aa Donald Kagan, author of The Peloponnesian War aThe dazzling moment of Golden Age Athens was built on democracy, silver, reason and power. It was arguably the most creative moment in history, when western architecture, philosophy, drama and politics were all given their fundamental form. Behind it all was the Athenian navy, its life and fortunes described here with exemplary clarity and a vivid engagement with the visceral realities of battle and the sea. John Hale combines fluent readability with up-to-date scholarship and a sense that in these pages you are witnessing not only a driving collective enterprise but the foundation-level struggles of our own world. This is tour de force of historical imagination.aa Adam Nicolson Author of the New York Times bestsellers Godas Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible and Seize the Fire: Heroism, Duty, and Nelsonas Battle of Trafalgar