Black Sea - Hardcover

Ascherson, Neal

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0809030438 ISBN 13: 9780809030439

Publisher: Hill and Wang, 1995

Synopsis

Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History

In this study of the fateful encounters between Europe and Asia on the shores of a legendary sea, Neal Ascherson explores the disputed meaning of community, nationhood, history, and culture in a region famous for its dramatic conflicts. What makes the Back Sea cultures distinctive, Ascherson agrues, is the way their comonent parts came together over the millennia to shape unique communities, languages, religions, and trade. As he shows with skill and persuasiveness, Black Sea patterns in the Caucasus, Russia, Ukraine, Romania, Turkey, and Greece have linked the peoples of Europe and Asia together for centuries.

About this title

About the Author

Neal Ascherson, a leading British scholar-journalist, writes for The Independent in London and The New York Review of Books. He is the author of Polish August and The Struggle for Poland, among other book. He lives in London

Reviews

If Ascherson (The Polish August) cannot pinpoint precisely where Xenophon's 10,000 soldiers were when, lost on the march home from Persia 2600 years ago, they saw the sea and thought they were home, there is little else he does not tell us in this exotic and seductive history of the Black Sea. From his tales of its peculiar composition?in the depths beneath its upper stream of living water, it is the world's largest dead sea?to those of the myriad of peoples who have inhabited its coasts throughout time, his stories seem more fabulous than the Arabian Nights. Ascherson tells of obscure tribes, familiar heroes, lost languages, current politics and ancient hostilities as poisonous as the depths of the Black Sea itself. Around the once "monstrously abundant" Black Sea, peoples who disliked each other lived together, at best uneasily, at worst at war: Goths, Romans, Germans, Greeks, Turks, Jews, Russians, Persians, Asians and others. "My sense of Black Sea life," concludes Ascherson, "a sad one, is that latent mistrust between different cultures is immortal... not a helpful model for the 'multi-ethnic society' of our hopes and dreams."
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The Black Sea has been the stage of human history since the times of the Bible. Owing to communism's domination in modern times, little about the area has been known to Western readers for decades. Ascherson (The Polish August, Viking, 1982) opens up that world once again, and it is an exciting one. The body of water itself is the destination of five major European and Asian rivers, including the Danube; it is kidney-shaped, 630 miles wide, and 330 miles long; the Crimean Peninsula projects from the north. Various cultures have lent it a wide array of history, politics, religion, language, and tradition. Black Sea is not a travel guide but an entertaining, informative book about the area and its people. The work has an excellent chronology, bibliography, and index but lacks crucial maps. For general and informed readers.
Melinda Stivers Leach, Precision Editorial Svcs., Wondervu, Col.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Hill and Wang
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0809030438
• ISBN 13: 9780809030439
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 305