Rating: 
Summary: Too dull to bother
Review: I had to read this book for a college course I'm taking. I find Greek culture very interesting but I found this book to be very dry and also quite confusing. The order of chapters seemed off to me and it was hard to follow who the auther was speaking about. If you want to learn about greek philosophy in a fun way I suggest Sophies world. It makes history far more interesting.
Rating: 
Summary: The Greek Way
Review: I read Edith Hamilton's "The Greek Way" many years ago.I picked it up thinking it was the 70th manner in which to express love. Instead, it opened my eyes to the beauty of the Golden Age of Greece and the gifts derived from that period to the generations that followed.
It also explained the difference between the West and the East once and for all for me. It is that difference that is applicable today in understanding the constant stress between cultures and why the Taliban and Osama bin Laden have chosen to defy us, the West.
The West is preoccupied with Life. The East is preoccupied with Death. One only has to consider the Ancient Greeks as being the first civilization to PLAY. The Olympic Games derived from that happy attitude.
The East is precoccupied with Death. Consider the pyramids of Egypt as an example. Or the crematoriums of the Nazis. Or the Kamikaze of the Japanese. Or the Muslim pilots that crashed into the World Trade Centers on Sept. 11.
The tension that exists in those two opposite philosophies results in the wars of the last 100 years.
Rating: 
Summary: A decent book.
Review: I read this book from September through October as a reading requirement for my AP European History class. While it wasn't a book that I was running home to read, it was a pretty good book about Greek philosophy, art, entertainment, and other things along that line. While the book can get boring after the first page, it is a fairly good book. It is a great book for European History studies, and provides good addition to books that don't go into detail about certain things on Greece. So, while the literature can be without a doubt classified as boring, it is a very good study of Greece and its history.
Rating:
Summary: Snore
Review: Indeed, the word "school" comes from the Greek word for "leisure." Therefore, this isn't a very good book for school, because there is absolutely no connection between "The Greek Way" and leisure. I had to read this freshman year in high school, and I had to force myself to finish. The most interesting part of the book is when the author goes into a detailed description about the Indian practice of chanting "Ohhhm". (Don't ask me what that has to do with Ancient Greece.)
Rating:
Summary: Simply fabulous
Review: It's Edith Hamilton writing about Greece. What more can one say? She was simply the best.
Rating:
Summary: Simply fabulous
Review: It's Edith Hamilton writing about Greece. What more can one say? She was simply the best.
Rating:
Summary: You've missed the point!
Review: It's remarkable how right-wingers manage to twist the words of a truly great writer to fit their own point of view. They praise Hamilton's noble words about the spirit of the love of life that the Greeks created, then proceed to ignore the chapter that most damns them: the one on Thucydides, who wrote about the corruption of power and wealth that we're seeing today in America.Hamilton points out quite clearly that the Greeks eventually fell, not BECAUSE of "multicultualism," which is just the latest code word for the assorted racists and bigots that run the country today, but rather because they FAILED to embrace it. The Athenians denied to others the freedom they claimed for themselves, they got greedy and stupid once they gained power, and they got wiped out when they overstretched their attempt at empire. It's sad that we obviously haven't learned a thing since then.
Rating:
Summary: You've missed the point!
Review: It's remarkable how right-wingers manage to twist the words of a truly great writer to fit their own point of view. They praise Hamilton's noble words about the spirit of the love of life that the Greeks created, then proceed to ignore the chapter that most damns them: the one on Thucydides, who wrote about the corruption of power and wealth that we're seeing today in America. Hamilton points out quite clearly that the Greeks eventually fell, not BECAUSE of "multicultualism," which is just the latest code word for the assorted racists and bigots that run the country today, but rather because they FAILED to embrace it. The Athenians denied to others the freedom they claimed for themselves, they got greedy and stupid once they gained power, and they got wiped out when they overstretched their attempt at empire. It's sad that we obviously haven't learned a thing since then.
Rating:
Summary: A great Edith Hamilton book!
Review: Many people know that Edith Hamilton was a schoolteacher for years at the Bryn Mawr School -- in fact, this very school I went to and although I never met Edith Hamilton, I heard about her from kindergarten and up. We read Mythology in third grade (for greek myths is the unit in third grade for most of the year) and every few days we'd learn more about the Edith Hamilton that used to teach at our school, and then was a nice author.
Rating:
Summary: Not very clear.
Review: The Greek way is supposed to be a text-book supliment for those studying Greece to get some sort of cultural understanding. My European history teacher, Mr. O'Keefe, gave us homework assignments from it. The homework took a while, but I thought that at least we were learning something. Boy, was I wrong. The author of the book makes an attempt to be interesting, but fails miserably. The book is extremely over-generalized. The first few chapters have more about Egypt than Greece. The information given in the book has no use in life, and I see no reason why anyone would want to read it.I wouldn't reccomend this book to a friend, unless for some reason they had to read it (in which case I would feel sorry for them). If you want some interesting information on the Greeks, look elsewhere.
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