Black Sea [Hardcover]

Neal Ascherson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 30, 1995

Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History

In this study of the fateful encounters between Europe and Asia on the shores of a legendary sea, Neal Ascherson explores the disputed meaning of community, nationhood, history, and culture in a region famous for its dramatic conflicts. What makes the Back Sea cultures distinctive, Ascherson agrues, is the way their comonent parts came together over the millennia to shape unique communities, languages, religions, and trade. As he shows with skill and persuasiveness, Black Sea patterns in the Caucasus, Russia, Ukraine, Romania, Turkey, and Greece have linked the peoples of Europe and Asia together for centuries.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In a colorful, learned and wholly original chronicle, Neal Ascherson shows us the Black Sea and its place in the history of Europe and Asia, from Jason and the Golden Fleece to the fall of Communism and the new world disorder. In his exploration of the myths and realities surrounding this remarkable region, where ancient cultures collided and modern states - Russia, Turkey, Romania, Greece, and Caucasus - mingle, he discovers that the meanings of community, nationhood, and cultural independence are both fierce and disturbingly uncertain.

From Publishers Weekly

If Ascherson (The Polish August) cannot pinpoint precisely where Xenophon's 10,000 soldiers were when, lost on the march home from Persia 2600 years ago, they saw the sea and thought they were home, there is little else he does not tell us in this exotic and seductive history of the Black Sea. From his tales of its peculiar composition?in the depths beneath its upper stream of living water, it is the world's largest dead sea?to those of the myriad of peoples who have inhabited its coasts throughout time, his stories seem more fabulous than the Arabian Nights. Ascherson tells of obscure tribes, familiar heroes, lost languages, current politics and ancient hostilities as poisonous as the depths of the Black Sea itself. Around the once "monstrously abundant" Black Sea, peoples who disliked each other lived together, at best uneasily, at worst at war: Goths, Romans, Germans, Greeks, Turks, Jews, Russians, Persians, Asians and others. "My sense of Black Sea life," concludes Ascherson, "a sad one, is that latent mistrust between different cultures is immortal... not a helpful model for the 'multi-ethnic society' of our hopes and dreams."
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 305 pages
• Publisher: Hill and Wang (November 30, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0809030438
• ISBN-13: 978-0809030439
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,012,173 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A lovely book, March 29, 2001

By 

John Anderson (Bar Harbor, ME USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Black Sea (Paperback)

This is a bold and imaginative look at an area critical to the development of Western culture.Ascherson takes us on a remarkable tour through geography and history, and one comes away with much of the excitement of a real traveller. If the book stumbles on occasion I think it should be forgiven given the complexities that the author is willing to address (and the remarkably few stumbles that he has made. I particularly enjoyed Ascherson taking us more or less up to the present, as the spectre of modern environmental collapse joins the never-ending wars whose origins become more understandable after one has read this book. I wish it were longer, I wish there were more obvious references to take us further once we were done, but this is a real gem even if you never get east of Long Island Sound.

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A magnificent book, January 3, 2003

By 

Joel Jacobsen (New Mexico USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Black Sea (Paperback)

Part travel book, part history, part natural history, this is a miscellany of fascinating stories about a fascinating region woven together into a single, tight narrative. There's a great deal of learning lightly worn and tremendous technical skill involved in the organization and writing. Those reviewers who criticize it for not conforming to a standard template have a point, but what they're really complaining about is its originality.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Travels in a tattered Tartary, June 25, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Black Sea (Paperback)

The style is journalistic which makes it easy and enjoyable to read. The author can tell a story convincingly and he tells many. The subject matter is extremely exotic for an American reader. I have no way to know how reliable this author is as a historian. I am always suspicious of first-person journalistic history. Unlike other readers, I enjoyed the bits about Poland. But I think he is at his best in the lengthy ancient history parts. The best thing I can say about this book is it left me wanting to learn more.