The Use and Abuse of History - Hardcover

Finley, Sir Moses I.

9780701120832: The Use and Abuse of History

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0701120835 ISBN 13: 9780701120832

Publisher: Chatto & Windus, 1975

A wide-ranging collection of essays which discuss ancient societies, and our interpretation of historical artefacts and documents in relation to historical viewpoints.

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From the Publisher:

"The most influential ancient historian of our time...Indisputably the most valuable writing on ancient history since 1945". --New York Review of Books

Few writers have taught us more about the ancient world than M I Finley. This provocative and wide-ranging collection of his essays contains illuminating discussions of some major issues: the nature of the Spartan state, the development of Greek law, mythological thinking in the Greek historians, utopian ideas old and new.

Yet Finley's immense and detailed knowledge of ancient societies is matched by his equally challenging insights into far larger topics of historical technique (can archaeology and anthropology really teach us much about ancient history?) the dangers of easy generalisations (was there ever really a Greek "nation"?) and the ways in which we all use the past to deal with our present problems (why have political activists from Isocrates to Edmund Burke and F D Roosevelt all preached a return to some kind of "ancestral constitution"?). The final chapter considers the boldest question of all: what does the classical tradition still have to offer us and why is it still worth studying history and the ancient world?

"What Finely offers to an exceptional degree is an abundance of ideas: ideas that provide genuine stimulus since they arise from knowledge and thought on central issues of ancient history that are seminal...and are presented in readable English." --Times Educational Supplement

Book Description:

The most influential ancient historian of our time. . . Indisputably the most valuable writing on ancient history since 1945. 'New York Review of Books'.

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