In Search of the Trojan War, Updated edition - Softcover

Wood, Michæl

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0520215990 ISBN 13: 9780520215993

Publisher: University of California Press, 1998

Synopsis

Tales of Troy and its heroes—Achilles and Hector, Paris and the legendary beauty Helen—have fired the human imagination for 3,000 years. With In Search of the Trojan War, Michael Wood brings vividly to life the legend and lore of the Heroic Age in an archaeological adventure that sifts through the myths and speculation to provide a fresh view of the riches and the reality of ancient Troy.

This gripping story shows why the legend of Troy forms the bedrock of Western culture and why its past is a paradigm of human history. Wood's meticulous scholarly sleuthing yields fascinating evidence about the continuity and development of human civilization in the Aegean and Asia Minor. With its 50 feet of debris resulting from constant rebuilding, human destruction, earthquake, and abandonment, the mound of Troy contains the beginnings and ends of new races and civilizations.

This edition includes a new preface, a new final chapter, and an addendum to the bibliography that take account of dramatic new developments in the search for Troy with the rediscovery, in Moscow, of the so-called Jewels of Helen and the re-excavation of the site of Troy, which began in 1988 and is yielding new evidence about the historical city.

About this title

About the Author:

Michael Wood is a writer and historian living in England. He is the author of several highly acclaimed books including In Search of the Trojan War (California, 1989).

From Publishers Weekly:

In this liberally illustrated volume written to accompany a forthcoming PBS series, BBC producer and series narrator Wood, author of In Search of the Dark Ages, etc., explores the origins of Homer's epics and efforts of archeologists to document the historic truth of the Bronze Age Trojan War as celebrated in the Iliad. Oral tradition and accounts by poets, he notes, have yet to be disproved by archeology. He cites the fascination which the Trojan story has exercised throughout history and on travelers of all periodsByron among them. Despite archeologist Heinrich Schliemann's exaggerations, the author credits him with the development of modern archeology into a science. Schliemann's finds and those of other archeologists of Mycenaean, Minoan and Hittite civilizations are discussed in some detail. Troy, Wood speculates, may have been one of many cties sacked by the Greeks for economic reasons, and Helen one of the many women captured. 50,000 first printing; History Book Club main selection; BOMC and Macmillan's Natural Science alternates.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0520215990
• ISBN 13: 9780520215993
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272