May 1, 2022
Author of the No. 1 New York Times best-selling Zealot, religion scholar Aslan resurrects the life of the little-known Howard Baskerville, An American Martyr in Persia who traveled there in the early 1900s, befriending revolutionaries intent on securing democracy and eventually joining them in battle. The Wolfson Prize-winning Figes gives us the history book we need to read now: The Story of Russia, starting with the ancient Rus--Baltic Slavs or Vikings?--and parsing the mythologies that have shaped the country (60,000-copy first printing). Author of the New York Times best-selling "Resistance Quartet," Moorehead offers a portrait of Mussolini's Daughter, who was instrumental in imposing fascism in Italy. A Georgetown professor of history and politics tells the story of his own family, The Sassoons, the Jewish Baghdadi dynasty that built an empire grounded in trade in the 18th through 20th centuries. An award winner in the author's native Spain, Vallejo's Papyrus unearths the fascinating story of books and libraries in the ancient world.
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June 20, 2022
Novelist and essayist Vallejo makes her English-language debut with this rewarding exploration of how books and libraries developed in the ancient Hellenistic and Roman eras. Detailing the influence of oral traditions on written narratives, changes in format from papyrus scrolls to tablets and codices, and the interplay between these early books and social, political, and cultural shifts, Vallejo contends that the history of books is closely intertwined with the development of Western civilization. She spotlights the creation, influence, and eventual decline of the Library of Alexandria; the subsequent burgeoning of libraries and booksellers in the Roman world; and the research methods and rhetorical techniques of Homer, Aristotle, Herodotus, and other Greek and Roman writers and philosophers. Throughout, Vallejo eloquently expresses her enthusiasm for literature and libraries, describing how the isolation and confusion she felt during a research fellowship at Oxford were alleviated by trips to the Sackler and Bodleian libraries and lamenting the social forces that imperil freedom of expression and maintenance of cultural memory. Written in a lush and immersive style and shot through with sparkling turns of phrase, this is catnip for bibliophiles and ancient history buffs.
July 15, 2022
Imagination and historical research converge in this memoir-ish book about books and a whole lot more. Spanish author Vallejo, here "consumed by the book I'm writing," beckons readers to join her on a sprawling, learned, lively personal history tour of books--"a silent dialogue between you and me." The narrative quickly morphs into a comprehensive, fact-laden, occasionally rambling intellectual history of ancient Greece and Rome. The author opens with a fablelike story about a king sending out hunters to find books, papyrus scrolls in many languages, "light, beautiful, and portable," for a great library in Alexandria. When Mark Antony arrived, he tried to woo Cleopatra with a special gift: 200,000 books for the city's library. "In Alexandria," writes Vallejo, "books served as fuel for passion," and that institution became the world's first public library. After Alexander died young, King Ptolemy worked to maintain the vast library, enlisting the help of a variety of scholars. Vallejo's narrative jumps around: illuminating tales from ancient history, descriptions of her research in Oxford's libraries, how to read a scroll, the education of a scribe, our fascination with The Iliad and The Odyssey. Throughout, the author draws on other writers (Borges, Christopher Morley, Umberto Eco) and films (Memento, It's a Wonderful Life) to help make her points, and she is clearly filled with wonder about myriad topics, almost all literary. For example, how many books were in ancient Greece? How many people could read then? Before turning her gaze to Rome, she discusses libraries in Nazi concentration camps. When the Romans led their military expeditions into Greece, they turned its books "into the spoils of war." In the "story of books in Rome, slaves are the protagonists." Vallejo frequently diverges from her primary path, covering education, religious persecution, the rise of reading, bookselling, and countless other topics. Unquestionably erudite, but the vast amount of information in this digressive work may limit the appeal.
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Starred review from September 1, 2022
Only a few scholars may recognize the name of Ptolemy II Philadelphus, but it was he who revolutionized the world in the third century BCE by establishing the great Library of Alexandria. While other rulers might spend their wealth on self-aggrandizing monuments or on vast military enterprises, this pharaoh bought, borrowed, and stole as many scrolls as he could discover, sending agents all over the Mediterranean world to acquire them. Attracted by the store of unique and rare manuscripts, and the knowledge limned onto their delicate surfaces, scholars flocked to Alexandria. Moving rapidly and seamlessly among disparate literary figures, prolific Spanish writer Vallejo references Homer, Tolkien, Borges, Durrell, the Septuagint, and a host more, uncovering deep connections among them. Anyone who's ever felt inadequate in the company of great minds will marvel at Vallejo's own humility in the presence of those authors she so insightfully cites. She understands how the internet's universal identifier, the URL, is at heart a call number for a library book. Thanks to Whittle's lively, propulsive translation, English-speaking book lovers and intellectual historians will all profit from this magnificent history of books, authors, and the often-anonymous librarians to whom civilization owes an unrepayable debt.
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