Men and Gods: MYTHS AND LEGENDS OF THE ANCIENT GREEKS (New York Review Books Classics) [Hardcover]

Rex Warner (Author), Edward Gorey (Illustrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 8, 2008 | Series: New York Review Books Classics

This outstanding collection brings together the novelist and scholar Rex Warner’s knack for spellbinding storytelling with Edward Gorey’s inimitable talent as an illustrator in a memorable modern recounting of the most beloved myths of ancient Greece.

Writing in a relaxed and winning colloquial style, Warner vividly recreates the classic stories of Jason and the Argonauts and Theseus and the Minotaur, among many others, while Gorey’s quirky pen-and-ink sketches offer a visual interpretation of these great myths in the understated but brilliantly suggestive style that has gained him admirers throughout the world. These tales cover the range of Greek mythology, including the creation story of Deucalion and Pyrrha, the heroic adventures of Perseus, the fall of Icarus, Cupid and Psyche’s tale of love, and the tragic history of Oedipus and Thebes. Men and Gods is an essential and delightful book with which to discover some of the key stories of world literature.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“In first place, the stories are beautiful and satisfying in themselves. In the second place, they have deeply affected our own literature.” –Rex Warner

“Shakespeare, Shelley, Tennyson and many others got their knowledge of Greek mythology from the often ironical–and always sophisticated–narratives of Ovid…Detail after detail fixes these myths in the memory…The Golden Age of Greece is dim today, but in Gods and Men the golden apples still shine upon the bough.” –The New York Times

“Rex Warner retells thirty-eight famous myths of ancient Greece that ought to be the intellectual heritage of all the young.” –The New York Times

“The British critic V. S. Pritchett once described Mr. Warner as ‘the only outstanding novelist of ideas whom the decade of ideas produced.’” –The New York Times

About the Author

Rex Warner (1905—1986) was an author, translator, and professor of English. Born in Birmingham, England, he was educated at Oxford. Warner was a member of the British Home Guard from 1942 until 1945. He was the Tallman Professor of Classics at Bowdoin College before joining the English faculty at the University of Connecticut in 1962.

Edward Gorey (1925—2000) was born in Chicago. He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, spent three years in the army testing poison gas, and attended Harvard College, where he majored in French literature and roomed with the poet Frank O’Hara. In 1953 Gorey published The Unstrung Harp, the first of his many extraordinary illustrated books, which include The Curious Sofa, The Haunted Tea Cosy, and The Epileptic Bicycle. NYRB published Gorey’s illustrated edition of H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds and The Haunted Looking Glass, a selection of his favorite tales of ghosts, ghouls, and grisly goings-on.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 296 pages
• Publisher: NYRB Classics; 2nd Edition edition (January 8, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590172639
• ISBN-13: 978-1590172636
• Product Dimensions: 5 x 0.8 x 7.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #521,771 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Still a Good Introduction to the Greek Myths, June 2, 2011

By 

S. Walton "loghyr" (San Mateo, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Men and Gods: MYTHS AND LEGENDS OF THE ANCIENT GREEKS (New York Review Books Classics) (Hardcover)

My Dad read this to me as a bedtime book, and once I could read myself I read it many times. This is a fantastic introduction to the Greek myths for any young adult and perhaps some older ones as well.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a good collection, well narrated, November 4, 2010

By 

Bruce D. Wilner "Bruce David Wilner" (Alexandria, VA USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Men and Gods: MYTHS AND LEGENDS OF THE ANCIENT GREEKS (New York Review Books Classics) (Hardcover)

This is quality material, skillfully narrated albeit accompanied by illustrations that did more to confuse me and cause me consternation me than actually to elucidate the tales. The selection is balanced, covering gods and heroes with equal emphasis, though it fails to provide the de rigueur "origin of the Olympians" explanation or--as some would say is critically important--address more mythohistoric material such as the "Seven Against Thebes" (which I, personally, find boring). This isn't as encyclopedic as Schwab's work, and it doesn't provide the umpteen variants and footnotes-atop-footnotes of Graves's work, but it does a better job than, say, the Bulfinch or Hamilton toward which the feet of the uninitiated are typically directed. I still think--regardless of the obvious juvenility (which I prefer to regard as juvenescence!) of the target audience--you can't do better than D'Aulaire. Their coverage is superior, their illustrations are unique and intriguing, the stories are expertly narrated, and you just can't ask for something that looks or feels more comprehensive and thoughtfully knitted together. All of these are available at AMAZON.com! (Gentlemen, you can send my commission checks to my address of record :-)