The World of Odysseus by M. I. Finley. New York. 1978. Viking Press. 0670787647. 192 pages. hardcover. 

DESCRIPTION - Are the Iliad and the Odyssey just charming poetic fantasies? Or do they give a more or less accurate picture of the Mycenaean period, the early Dark Age or Homer's own era? Do archaeological discoveries like Schliemann's excavations at Troy bear out Homer's account of the Trojan War? The World of Odysseus is a concise and penetrating account of the society that gave birth to the Iliad and the Odyssey--a book that provides a vivid picture of the Greek Dark Ages, its men and women, works and days, morals and values. Long celebrated as a pathbreaking achievement in the social history of the ancient world, M.I. Finley's brilliant study remains, as classicist Bernard Knox notes, "as indispensable to the professional as it is accessible to the general reader"--a fundamental companion for students of Homer and Homeric Greece.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Sir Moses I. Finley (May 20, 1912–June 23, 1986) was an American professor, whose prosecution by the McCarran Security Committee led to his move to England, where he became English classical scholar and eventually master of Darwin College, Cambridge. His most notable work is The Ancient Economy (1973), where he argued that status and civic ideology governed the economy in antiquity rather than rational economic motivations.

See if zenosbooks.com has any books for sale by this author