Not All Dead White Men: Classics and Misogyny in the Digital Age


Donna Zuckerberg - 2018
    Its proponents cite ancient Greek and Latin texts to support their claims--arguing that they articulate a model of masculinity that sustained generations but is now under siege.Donna Zuckerberg dives deep into the virtual communities of the far right, where men lament their loss of power and privilege, and strategize about how to reclaim them. She finds, mixed in with weightlifting tips and misogynistic vitriol, the words of the Stoics deployed to support an ideal vision of masculine life. On other sites, pickup artists quote Ovid's Ars Amatoria to justify ignoring women's boundaries. By appropriating the Classics, these men lend a veneer of intellectual authority and ancient wisdom to their project of patriarchal white supremacy. In defense or retaliation, feminists have also taken up the Classics online, to counter the sanctioning of violence against women.Not All Dead White Men reveals that some of the most controversial and consequential debates about the legacy of the ancients are raging not in universities but online.

By the Sword: A History of Gladiators, Musketeers, Samurai, Swashbucklers, and Olympic Champions


Richard A. Cohen - 2002
    So did Shakespeare, Karl Marx, Grace Kelly, and President Truman, who would cross swords with his daughter, Margaret, when she came home from school. Lincoln was a canny dueler. Ignatius Loyola challenged a man to a duel for denying Christ’s divinity (and won). Less successful, but no less enthusiastic, was Mussolini, who would tell his wife he was “off to get spaghetti,” their code to avoid alarming the children. By the Sword is an epic history of sword fighting—a science, an art, and, for many, a religion that began at the dawn of civilization in ancient Egypt and has been an obsession for mankind ever since. With wit and insight, Richard Cohen gives us an engrossing history of the world via the sword.   With a new Preface by the author

Operation Primrose: U110, the Bismarck and the Enigma code breakers


David Boyle - 2015
    One of the biggest secrets of the war, the capture of that one machine turned the tide of the war in British favour. The German U-boat attacks were crippling the nation’s ability to survive, and the key to breaking that threat was in deciphering the German’s naval Enigma code. Turing and his colleagues at Bletchley Park worked tirelessly to crack the code, and with the working Enigma machine they finally had their break-through moment. This book sets the story, and the Enigma cryptographers, in context – at the heart of the Battle of the Atlantic, when it reached its crescendo in the pursuit of the battleship Bismarck the week after U110 was taken. It sets Bletchley Park in its wider context too, at the heart of an intricate and maverick network of naval intelligence, tracking signals and plotting them to divert convoys around waiting U-boats, involving officers like James Bond’s future creator, Ian Fleming. It also sets out the most important context of all, forgotten in so much of the Enigma history: that Britain’s own naval code had already been cracked, and its signals were being read, thanks to the efforts of Turing’s opposite number, the German naval cryptographer, Wilhelm Tranow.An exciting and enthralling true story ‘Operation Primrose’ is an excellently researched piece on the race for naval supremacy in the Second World War. David Boyle's work has been widely praised. ‘The tone of the book may be gloomy but there is plenty of entertainment value …’ Anne Ashworth, The Times ‘Exhilarating’ Daily Mail ‘He tells these stories, on the whole persuasively and with some startling asides.’ New Statesman ‘A book that is engagingly sensitive to the sentiments of what is sometimes called “middle England”’ Dominic Lawson, Sunday Times David Boyle is a British author and journalist who writes mainly about history and new ideas in economics, money, business and culture. He lives in Crystal Palace, London. His books include ‘Alan Turing: Unlocking the Enigma’, ‘Rupert Brooke: England’s Last Patriot’, ‘Peace on Earth: The Christmas Truce of 1914’, ‘Jerusalem: England’s National Anthem’, ‘Unheard Unseen: Warfare in the Dardanelles’, ‘Towards the Setting Sun: The Race for America’ and ‘The Age to Come’. Endeavour Press is the UK's leading independent digital publisher. We are always interested in hearing from our readers. Endeavour Press believes that the future is now.

Sulla: The Last Republican


Arthur Keaveney - 1982
    Completely rewritten and updated to include the further discoveries of the last two decades, it challenges traditional views of Sulla as a tyrant and harsh military dictator and instead delivers a compellingly complex portrait of a man obsessed with the belief that he was blessed with divine favour.Written by a leading authority on the classical world, this lively and entertaining book transports us through Sulla's rise from poverty and obscurity to his dictatorship of Rome, highlighting his dedication and achievements in better ordering the Republic before his decline a generation later.

How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius


Donald J. Robertson - 2019
    The Meditations, his personal journal, survives to this day as one of the most loved self-help and spiritual classics of all time. In How to Think Like a Roman Emperor, cognitive psychotherapist Donald Robertson weaves the life and philosophy of Marcus Aurelius together seamlessly to provide a compelling modern-day guide to the Stoic wisdom followed by countless individuals throughout the centuries as a path to achieving greater fulfillment and emotional resilience.How to Think Like a Roman Emperor takes readers on a transformative journey along with Marcus, following his progress from a young noble at the court of Hadrian—taken under the wing of some of the finest philosophers of his day—through to his reign as emperor of Rome at the height of its power. Robertson shows how Marcus used philosophical doctrines and therapeutic practices to build emotional resilience and endure tremendous adversity, and guides readers through applying the same methods to their own lives.Combining remarkable stories from Marcus’s life with insights from modern psychology and the enduring wisdom of his philosophy, How to Think Like a Roman Emperor puts a human face on Stoicism and offers a timeless and essential guide to handling the ethical and psychological challenges we face today.

Special Operations in the Age of Chivalry, 1100-1550


Yuval Noah Harari - 2007
    These undercover operations were aimed chiefly against key individuals, mostly royalty or the leaders of the opposing army, and against key fortified places, including bridges, mills and dams. However, because of their clandestine nature, these deeds of -derring-do- have not been studied in any detail, a major gap which this book fills. It surveys a wide variety of special operations, from the eleventh to the sixteenth century. It then analyzes in greater depth six select and exciting operations: the betrayal of Antioch in 1098; the attempt to rescue King Baldwin II from the dungeon of Khartpert in 1123; the assassination of Conrad of Montferrat in 1192; the attempt to storm Calais in 1350; the -dirty war- waged by the rulers of France and Burgundy in the 1460s and 1470s; and the demolition of the flour mill of Auriol in 1536. -A portrait of espionage, covert operations, assassination squads, and the deep penetration of seemingly invulnerable fortresses or security systems matching anything to be found in the war stories of the modern era.- MATTHEW BENNETT, SANDHURST. Professor YUVAL NOAH HARARI teaches at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and is the author of the international bestseller Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind.