Reviews for Other Mexico: The North American Triangle Completed

The average rating for Other Mexico: The North American Triangle Completed based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-03-28 00:00:00 Jimmy Mcwhorter This is a valuable collection of essays by one of France's most eminent classicists of the late twentieth century. Their common theme is the continuing influence of antiquity on modern culture, especially politics. As Vidal-Naquet declares, "our relationship with Antiquity is an integral part of our own world" (67). The core of the volume is a triptych of essays on the appropriation of classical antiquity during the Enlightenment and French Revolution. Much of his focus here is on the century-long struggle between partisans of Sparta and Athens, a conflict that implicated many of the great intellectual and political struggles of the long eighteenth century. Other essays concern historians' use of Plato, the role of the Atlantis myth in the formation of nationalism, Chateaubriand's sojourn at Athens, and Renan's lifelong fascination with the Greeks, about whom he never wrote in his long and prolific career. The scholarship is impeccable, the writing easy, graceful, and absent any antiquarian pedantry. The only defects, such as they are, are the lack of a bibliography and a tighter cohesion of the essays, which are not always linked as closely as they could be. Overall, though, this is a book that holds considerable appeal for scholars working in such disparate fields as classical literature and history, classical receptions, and European intellectual history. Serving such disparate audiences is a challenging task, but it is one Vidal-Naquet fulfills admirably. Monday, August 27, 2012

Review # 2 was written on 2018-11-06 00:00:00 Jarrell Wilson After getting a bad taste from reading Half the Sky, I needed something about women's situation with more nuance. A friend, who I knew from discussions could be quite subtle in her arguments, had written about her recent research in India, so I sought her book. It is an academic book (sociology, anthropology, Indian and Hindu law, Women's Studies)and mostly out of my field (literature, rhetoric and composition, women's studies), so sometimes hard going. However, there were enough summaries to help me focus. And since it was partially ethnography, the stories of the real women held my attention.