Cleopatra: The Queen who Challenged Rome and Conquered Eternity by Alberto Angela

[French] - Jules César by Plutarque

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/253029 [https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/253029] to listen full audiobooks. Title: [French] - Jules César Author: Plutarque Narrator: Patrick Martinez-Bournat Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 2 hours 20 minutes Release date: April 1, 2022 Genres: Ancient Civilizations Publisher's Summary: Général et homme politique romain (100-44 av. J.-C.), Jules César créa les bases du système impérial romain. Son destin exceptionnel marqua le monde romain et l'histoire universelle : ambitieux et brillant, il s'appuya sur le courant réformateur et démagogue pour son ascension politique ; stratège et tacticien habile, il repoussa les frontières romaines jusqu'au Rhin et à l'océan Atlantique en conquérant la Gaule, puis utilisa ses légions pour s'emparer du pouvoir. Il se fit nommer dictateur à vie, et fut assassiné peu après par une conspiration de sénateurs. - -

Hearing Homer's Song: The Brief Life and Big Idea of Milman Parry by Robert Kanigel

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/447328 [https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/447328] to listen full audiobooks. Title: Hearing Homer's Song: The Brief Life and Big Idea of Milman Parry Author: Robert Kanigel Narrator: Richard Poe Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 10 hours 1 minute Release date: April 27, 2021 Genres: Ancient Civilizations Publisher's Summary: From the acclaimed biographer of Jane Jacobs and Srinivasa Ramanujan comes the first full life and work of arguably the most influential classical scholar of the twentieth century, who overturned long-entrenched notions of ancient epic poetry and enlarged the very idea of literature. In this literary detective story, Robert Kanigel gives us a long overdue portrait of an Oakland druggist's son who became known as the 'Darwin of Homeric studies.' So thoroughly did Milman Parry change our thinking about the origins of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey that scholars today refer to a 'before' Parry and an 'after.' Kanigel describes the 'before,' when centuries of readers, all the way up until Parry's trailblazing work in the 1930's, assumed that the Homeric epics were 'written' texts, the way we think of most literature; and the 'after' that we now live in, where we take it for granted that they are the result of a long and winding oral tradition. Parry made it his life's work to develop and prove this revolutionary theory, and Kanigel brilliantly tells his remarkable story--cut short by Parry's mysterious death by gunshot wound at the age of thirty-three. From UC Berkeley to the Sorbonne to Harvard to Yugoslavia--where he traveled to prove his idea definitively by studying its traditional singers of heroic poetry--we follow Parry on his idiosyncratic journey, observing just how his early notions blossomed into a full-fledged theory. Kanigel gives us an intimate portrait of Parry's marriage to Marian Thanhouser and their struggles as young parents in Paris, and explores the mystery surrounding Parry's tragic death at the Palms Hotel in Los Angeles. Tracing Parry's legacy to the modern day, Kanigel explores how what began as a way to understand the Homeric epics became the new field of 'oral theory,' which today illuminates everything from Beowulf to jazz improvisation, from the Old Testament to hip-hop.

Cleopatra: The Queen who Challenged Rome and Conquered Eternity by Alberto Angela

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/440193 [https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/440193] to listen full audiobooks. Title: Cleopatra: The Queen who Challenged Rome and Conquered Eternity Author: Alberto Angela Narrator: Derek Perkins Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 14 hours 32 minutes Release date: March 23, 2021 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4 of Total 5 Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 1 Genres: Ancient Civilizations Publisher's Summary: One of Italy’s most revered cultural figures reconstructs the extraordinary life of the legendary Cleopatra at the height of her power in this epic story of passion, intrigue, betrayal, and war. Our world today would not be the same without Cleopatra. While she is one of the most famous figures in history, the legendary Egyptian queen remains, in many ways, an enigma. In this mesmerizing history, Alberto Angela offers a fresh and dynamic portrait of this extraordinary ruler, revealing a strikingly modern woman born in an ancient era and skilled in the art of diplomacy and war, who would conquer the heart of a general—Marc Antony—and Rome itself. Cleopatra focuses on a twenty-year period that marked a sweeping change in Roman history, beginning with the assassination of Julius Caesar that led to the end of the Republic, and ending with the suicides of Antony and Cleopatra and the birth of the Augustan Empire. Angela brings the people, stories, customs, and traditions of this fascinating period alive as he transports us to the chaotic streets of the capital of the ancient world, the exotic port of Alexandria in Egypt, and to the bloody battlefields where an empire was won and lost.  Meticulously researched and rich with vivid detail, this sweeping history, reminiscent of the works of Simon Schama, Mary Beard’s SPQR, and Tom Holland’s Rubicon, recreates this remarkable era and the woman at its turbulent center. Translated from the Italian by Katherine Gregor “[Cleopatra] combines scholarship with novelistic detail and character depth…[Alberto Angela] effectively draws on previous scholarship, wading through legend and myth to get at the truth of what actually occurred… a character-rich historical biography.” -- Kirkus Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

The First Kingdom by Max Adams

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/432772 [https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/432772] to listen full audiobooks. Title: The First Kingdom Author: Max Adams Narrator: Kris Dyer Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 16 hours 1 minute Release date: February 4, 2021 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 3 of Total 1 Genres: Ancient Civilizations Publisher's Summary: The bestselling author of The King in the North turns his attention to the obscure era of British history known as 'the age of Arthur'. Somewhere in the dim void between the departure from Britain of the Roman legions at the start of the fifth century and the days of the venerable Bede, the kingdoms of Early Medieval Britain were formed. But by whom? And out of what? Max Adams scrutinizes the narrative handed down to us by later historians and chronicles, stripping away the most lurid nonsense about Arthur and synthesizing the research of the last forty years to tease out strands of reality from myth. His central theme evolves from an apparently simple question: how, after the end of the Roman state, were people taxed? Rejecting ethnic and nationalist explanations for the emergence of the Early Medieval kingdoms, Adams shows how careful use of a wide range of perspectives from anthropology to geography can deliver a picture of the emergence of distinct polities in the sixth century that survive long enough to be embedded in the medieval landscape, recorded in the lines of river, road and watershed and in place names.

The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason by Charles Freeman

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/436101 [https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/436101] to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason Author: Charles Freeman Narrator: Nigel Patterson Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 16 hours 2 minutes Release date: January 5, 2021 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 2 of Total 3 Ratings of Narrator: 1 of Total 1 Genres: Ancient Civilizations Publisher's Summary: A radical and powerful reappraisal of the impact of Constantine's adoption of Christianity on the later Roman world, and on the subsequent development both of Christianity and of Western civilization. When the Emperor Contstantine converted to Christianity in 368 AD, he changed the course of European history in ways that continue to have repercussions to the present day. Adopting those aspects of the religion that suited his purposes, he turned Rome on a course from the relatively open, tolerant and pluralistic civilization of the Hellenistic world, towards a culture that was based on the rule of fixed authority, whether that of the Bible, or the writings of Ptolemy in astronomy and of Galen and Hippocrates in medicine. Only a thousand years later, with the advent of the Renaissance and the emergence of modern science, did Europe begin to free itself from the effects of Constantine's decision, yet the effects of his establishment of Christianity as a state religion remain with us, in many respects, today. Brilliantly wide-ranging and ambitious, this is a major work of history.