Caroline Alexander

Many have forgotten that the subject of the "Illiad" was war--not merely the poetical romance of the war at Troy, but war, in all its enduring devastation. This groundbreaking reading of Homer's epic poem restores the poet's vision of the tragedy of war, addressing many of the central questions that define the war experience of every age.

Just before sunrise on April 28, 1789, in the far reaches of the South Pacific, Master's Mate Fletcher Christian and three other men, armed with cutlasses, bayonets and a musket, apprehended Lieutenant William Bligh and placed him and eighteen officers and crewmen in a small boat. This mutiny on board His Majesty's armed transport Bounty impelled every man on a fateful course-- Bligh and his loyalists on a historic boat voyage, Christian and his followers...

The 1914 Shackleton Expedition to the South Pole as seen by a cat. He is Mrs. Chippy, whose owner is the ship's carpenter and they are so close it's like a man and wife. Mrs. Chippy describes how he helped the crew retain their sanity during the many months they were trapped by ice.

"When Emily Wilson's translation of The Odyssey appeared in 2017-revealing the ancient poem in a contemporary idiom that "combines intellectual authority with addictive readability" (Edith Hall, The Sunday Telegraph)-critics lauded it as "a revelation" (Susan Chira, The New York Times) and "a cultural landmark" (Charlotte Higgins, The Guardian) that would forever change how Homer is read in English. Now Wilson has returned with an equally revelatory...