Greece

Teaching: you’re frustrated and exhausted one day, gratified and fulfilled the next. Teaching is not like other careers; we teachers give our whole self to our students day after day. Blending humorous memoir and classroom ideas, the author of “Miss, I wish you a bed of roses:” Teaching Secondary School English in Greece, looks back on her 40 years of teaching international students. She writes about her teaching insecurities, secondary school and college composition classes, the difficult and the great, the base and the sublime. She describes school grades, bells and meetings, routines of any high school, and although teaching in Greece has unique challenges, Greek teens are like teenagers everywhere, full of hopes and dreams for the future. Besides looking at her own career growth, the author offers advice for language and literature classes, and ideas for using poetry, songs and film to create a lively atmosphere for learning. Whether you are a new teacher interested in suggestions for your classes, including ESL or EFL teachers, or an experienced teacher looking for new ideas, “Miss I wish you a bed of roses:” Teaching Secondary School English in Greece is for you. But not only teachers -- anyone who has taken an English language or literature class or has children taking literature classes-- will enjoy this spirited memoir, enhanced by the author’s poetry and student comments. Her main advice: content counts but more so, formulating your teaching philosophy. And don’t forget to keep your temper and your sense of humor!

The distinguished historian Michael Llewellyn-Smith, author of the classic Ionian Vision as well as a number of other important studies about modern Greece, writes about this book: The story of how the Greeks founded their independent state, through a mixture of bravery, persistence, skulduggery and guile, is an inspiring one, and there is no better time to tell it than the 200th anniversary of the outbreak of the Greek war of independence in 1821. Athina Cacouri’s new book, 1821: The Founding of Modern Greece, tells the whole complicated story, from the outbreak of war in March 1821 to the emergence of a nominally independent state, in an English language narrative adapted from her Greek original in terms suitable for a young readership. The main focus of her book, rightly, is the leading Greek personalities, ranging from the doughty warrior Theodore Kolokotronis, whose vivid words on the ‘torment’ of leading an army of Greeks she quotes, to the western-influenced Alexander Mavrocordatos (for whom Cacouri has little love), and above all the tragic figure of Ioannis Capodistrias, the ‘Governor’ or first President of Greece, who did all in his power, with meagre resources, to create a well governed modern state. He was assassinated in Nafplion on 27 September 1831. Capodistrias is the first hero of this book. The other is the Greek People, to whose developing national feeling the emergence of the Greek state is largely owed. In what will be a crowded market, the book holds its own by the vigour of its narrative and judgements, and Athina Cacouri’s knowledge and love of her native country and its people. MICHAEL LLEWELLYN-SMITH Born in 1928, in the town of Patras, Greece, Athina Cacouri has lived in Vienna, Austria and Philadelphia, USA, and mostly in Athens, Greece. She has children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. She has worked in a petroleum company, a shipping agency, in tourism and as a journalist and a translator. She has published four volumes of detective stories, eight historical novels, and three studies of history, all about Greece during the last two centuries. Her translation of Stephen Vincent Benét’s short story ‘The Devil and Daniel Webster’ and of Charles Dickens’s The Mystery of Edwin Drood, as well as her novels Primarolia, set in Patras at the end of the 19th century, and Thekli, set during the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913, have been awarded major literary prizes. Her most recent works are two studies of the political rift which divided Greece during World War I, and a fresh look at the Greek War of Independence, 1821, and the creation of the modern Greek state, a translation of which is the volume in hand.

In A Branch of Wild Olive L. Messinesi has presented with considerable erudition a complete survey of the Olympic Movement.

Now re-issued in a third, updated edition, this book provides a concise, illustrated introduction to the modern history of Greece, from the first stirrings of the national movement in the late eighteenth century to the present day. The current economic crisis has marked a turning point in the country's history. This third edition includes a new final chapter, which analyses contemporary political, economic and social developments. It includes additional illustrations together with updated tables and suggestions for further reading. Designed to provide a basic introduction, the first edition of this hugely successful Concise History won the Runciman Award for the best book on an Hellenic topic published in 1992 and has been translated into twelve languages.

A history of the Greek resistance in the Second World War discusses one of the most troubled and fascinating aspects of modern Greek and European history: the anti-axis resistance. It is a pioneering history of the men and women who waged the struggle against the axis and provides a comparative study of the guerrilla armies of ELAS and EDES. Previous studies have either neglected the study of the guerrilla armies altogether or focused on their political and operational activities. As a result we know very little about the lives, experiences and beliefs of the men and women within these groups, their provisioning, leisure and relations with the civilian population. A history of the Greek resistance in the Second World War delves into this unexplored area and provides new insights on the formation of the resistance movements and the experiences of the guerrilla fighters. The book follows the guerrillas from enlistment to the battlefield, examining the rise and origins of the resistance armies and how they governed their territories. It explores how their experiences of hardship, combat and personal loss shaped their self-image and social attitudes, the complex reasons that led partisans to enlist and fight, and relations between the guerrillas and the civilian population. Existing studies have presented the guerrillas as political soldiers and underscored the importance of ideology in motivation and morale. A history of the Greek resistance in the Second World War offers a more complex image and looks at a series of factors that have been neglected by scholars including kinship and group ties, violence, religious beliefs and leadership. The book will appeal to both academics and general readers interested in the Greek resistance, military history and the history of resistance movements during the Second World War.

Κυκλοφόρησε στα αγγλικά «Η Ιστορία ενός αιχμαλώτου» του Στρατή Δούκα, μια από τις σημαντικότερες αφηγήσεις της περιπέτειας όσων δεν μπόρεσαν να διαφύγουν έγκαιρα από τη μικρασιατική ακτή το 1922. «Ένα αληθινό διαμάντι» σύμφωνα με τον Φώτη Κόντογλου. 1922, ελληνοτουρκικός πόλεμος: Η Σμύρνη, η κοσμοπολίτικη πόλη της Μικράς Ασίας, πυρπολείται και λεηλατείται. Ο Νικόλας, Έλληνας στρατιώτης από την Ανατολία, αιχμαλωτίζεται από τους Τούρκους και μαζί με άλλους αιχμαλώτους εκτοπίζεται στην ενδοχώρα. Ωστόσο, καταφέρνει να δραπετεύσει, και έτσι αρχίζει ο αγώνας του για επιβίωση. Σε αυτό το φιλειρηνικό και βαθιά αντιπολεμικό έργο ο πρωταγωνιστής αφηγείται τις κακουχίες, τα δεινά και τις ταπεινώσεις που υπέστη, με τρόπο παραστατικό και ύφος γλαφυρό. Ο Στρατής Δούκας, που βίωσε προσωπικά τους μεγάλους πολέμους του 20ού αιώνα, μας επαναφέρει τη δραματική εμπειρία του Νικόλα Κοζάκογλου, πραγματικού πρωταγωνιστή, χωρίς φανατισμό και εχθρότητα, τοποθετώντας την αξιοπρέπεια του ανθρώπου στο επίκεντρο της αφήγησης. «Η ιστορία ενός αιχμαλώτου» έχει αναγνωριστεί ως ένα σημαντικό ευρωπαϊκό παράδειγμα της αντιπολεμικής λογοτεχνίας του 20ού αιώνα.

Peter Fiennes's road trip around Greece [is] engagingly described' Mary Beard, TLS'Fiennes is a brilliant and generous guide through Greece' ObserverWhat do the Greek myths mean to us today?It's now a golden age for these tales - they crop up in novels, films and popular culture. But what's the modern relevance of Theseus, Hera and Pandora? Were these stories ever meant for children? And what's to be seen now at the places where heroes fought and gods once quarrelled?Peter Fiennes travels to the sites of some of the most famous Greek myths, on the trail of hope, beauty and a new way of seeing what we have done to our world. Fiennes walks through landscapes - stunning and spoiled - on the trail of dancing activists and Arcadian shepherds, finds the 'most beautiful beach in Greece', consults the Oracle, and loses himself in the cities, remote villages and ruins of this storied land.

The Acropolis and its Museum constitute an integrated architectural and artistic unity, one of the most important in the history of global civilization. An informative and attractive guidebook that brings to life the monuments preserved on the sacred rock and the unrivalled artworks exhibited in the museum makes visiting the Acropolis and its Museum a unique experience.
The Acropolis. Visiting its Museum and its Monuments, outcome of assiduous research based on the most recent scientific findings, aims to be a friendly and useful travel companion. Its descriptions and interpretative analyses help us to see the monuments in a different way and to understand the historical, artistic and political events that contributed to their creation. Through the texts and the illustrations we get to know the gods and heroes who were worshipped on the Acropolis, the leaders who envisaged the major projects, the artists who brought them to fruition, as well as the innovative ideas they applied and the Athenian citizens who admired and enjoyed these achievements.
This little book will help us to explore and engage with the monuments of Acropolis, not with awe but with the joy that springs from knowledge.

"Zissimos Lorenzatos (1915-2004), essayist, thinker and poet, was arguably Greece’s most significant man of letters in the twentieth century. In the Aegean Notebooks, a record of his observations and reflections while sailing among the Greek islands in the 1970s and 1980s, the special quality of his literary and philosophical gifts, and of the man himself, are vividly present. Along with everything a mariner yearns to bring ashore, all he has felt and experienced at sea with the wake of the boat unfurling behind him, Lorenzatos brings us in addition a lifetime’s learning and contemplation. For him, life, and the living of it, was of the essence. As he observes in his foreword to these notebooks: '...life itself writes nothing, it erases everything that is written about it, and simply, irreplaceably lives, like the inaccessible ""well of water springing up""."