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Why Homer Matters

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Why Homer Matters

By: Adam Nicolson
Narrated by: John Lee
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Adam Nicolson sees the Iliad and the Odyssey as the foundation myths of Greek - and our - consciousness, collapsing the passage of 4,000 years and making the distant past of the Mediterranean world as immediate to us as the events of our own time. Homer's poems occupy, as Adam Nicolson writes, "a third space" in the way we relate to the past: not as memory, which lasts no more than three generations, nor as the objective accounts of history, but as epic, invented after memory but before history, poetry that aims "to bind the wounds that time inflicts".

The Homeric poems are among the oldest stories we have, drawing on deep roots in the Eurasian steppes beyond the Black Sea. These poems, which ask the eternal questions about the individual and the community, honor and service, love and war, tell us how we became who we are.

©2014 Adam Nicolson (P)2015 Tantor Ancient Europe Greece Literary History & Criticism Ancient History Mythology Ancient Greece

Critic reviews

"Nicolson's spirited exploration illuminates our own indelible past." ( Kirkus)
Beautiful Writing • Insightful Analysis • Masterful Narration • Intellectual Depth • Passionate Interpretation
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This was not super helpful. It might have made me appreciate Homer less if I had trusted the author. If you must read this one, put it at the bottom of your reading list.

Read “Who Killed Homer” instead

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A superb work of imaginative, intellectual and beautifully written piece of history about Homer and The Illiad and the Odyssey. And it is about so much more than Homer and the stories. The author spreads tentacles out to reach the the cores of the many Bronze Age civilizations from which Adam Nicolson believes the Homeric myths derive. The connections he draws between
Them and his penetrating suggestions of meaning are nothing short of dazzling. Nicholson's book should be read And reread.

Why Homer? Adam answers the question full. This bookIs must read.

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This was the most engaging, enlightening, and currently relevant presentation of Homer’s epics I’ve ever heard. It brings Homer’s wisdom from the past to right now.

Profound Insight Into Homer Poetically Expressed!

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I started WHM after reading an essay by Simon Winchester, who recommended WHM. I read the Odyssey in high school, but I did not understand, for lack of a better description, the depth of The Odyssey. I put WHM down for a few months and reread the Odyssey. My experiences and evolved reading skills helped me appreciate The Odyssey and Homer in a way the young me in high school could ever appreciate. Coming back to WHM, I could now relate to the analysis and life Nicolson breathed into Homer. I now view Homer as not just a poet, real or not, but a theory for thinking about history, storytelling, struggle, life, language, duty, and cunning.

I understand why Winchester recommends WHM because Nicolson and Winchester have very similar methods to research and descriptions of topics and people we take for granted.

A Good Challenge

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Easily the most interesting book on Homer I’ve ever read. The author speaks on the universal human themes in the stories and relates them to his own life. There is a portion where the author recounts being the victim of a sexual assault while visiting a foreign country. This section in particular is beautiful written and spoke to me on a personal level.

Amazing book

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Nicolson is hopelessly romantic about Homer in the very best way. His Homer is a fount of beauty and violence - and the heroic ethics that come from their mutual expression in the world. As such he brings us into Homer’s world, to see the Achaeans as steppe warriors in an overly civilized eastern Mediterranean world; just as he brings Homer to our world. In this, Homer is not omnipresent, but instead only to be found in milieus of danger, courage, intensely earned and felt beauty, and natural solemnity. Although by rather cowardly suggesting in his Conclusion that Homer offers no life lessons, the lessons both he and Nicolson provide in the preceding 12 chapters are enough to reinvigorate our flaccid and fear-driven way of life. An extraordinary book that I will cherish unto death, masterfully told by John Lee.

We all get the Homer we deserve

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Skip the chapter about how the Greeks were just like inner city American gangsters (LOL)

Flawed but worth the listen.

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I have not read Homer since University. I find it amazing that we are still reading in the original or in translation something written in 700 B.C. The events depicted in the epics are thought to have taken place, as early as 1800 B.C.

Nicholson explores the age old question of was there such a person as Homer or more than one person. The author covers the history of Homer, Nicholson says the linguistic analysis suggest that “The Iliad” was first then “The Odyssey”. Nicholson sums up what we still look for in Homer: “Wisdom, his fearless encounter with the dreadful, his love of love and hatred of death, the sheer scale of his embrace, his energy and brightness, his resistance to nostalgia.”

Nicholson has written a beautiful study: full of insight, generosity and unaffected passion, the book is about what Homer means to him. One of my favorite narrators John Lee narrated the book.

Fascinating

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Pleasing narration and a fascinating subject. One of my best audible experiences. Well with the time.

An enjoyable study.

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I had no idea when I bought this that the author is the same author of A Seabird's Cry. I picked it up early on, though. This book is also uniquely beautifully written. The author brings poetry to history and science like no other. Whether your interest is Homer, the Bronze Age, or just good writing, you will not regret this book. Glad I bought an audiobook though I'm going to need multiple listens to process the information thoroughly.

Beautifully written

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