Year in Books
A Handbook of Greek Mythology , by H.J. Rose. A scholarly and wide ranging overview, concisely and skillfully written. Do professors like Rose still exist? Kill or Get Killed , by Col. Rex Applegate. The classic guide to "riot control techniques, manhandling, and close combat". Full of information I look forward to applying in 2015. Lord Byron’s Foot , by George Green. His poems are funny, he’s the contemporary master of ekphrasis, his references range from Pindar to David Lee Roth. The Counterfeiters , by Hugh Kenner. Themes include "[T]he Enlightenment; Buster Keaton (stoic comedian); bad poetry; Albrecht Durer; Joyce; Swift, Pope; closed systems, mathematical and mechanical; Charles Babbage and his Calculating Engines; the late history of Latin abstract nouns; Andy Warhol; Gödel’s Proof; horses; computer games; a clockwork duck that suffered from indigestion; and a man who wore a gas mask to ride his bicycle." The History of Atlantis , by Lewis Spenc