Point Epithetical Books Cleopatra: A Life
| Title | : | Cleopatra: A Life |
| Author | : | Stacy Schiff |
| Book Format | : | Hardcover |
| Book Edition | : | Deluxe Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 369 pages |
| Published | : | November 1st 2010 by Little, Brown and Company |
| Categories | : | Biography. History. Nonfiction. Historical |
Stacy Schiff
Hardcover | Pages: 369 pages Rating: 3.67 | 94499 Users | 5113 Reviews
Description Supposing Books Cleopatra: A Life
The Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer brings to life the most intriguing woman in the history of the world: Cleopatra, the last queen of Egypt.Her palace shimmered with onyx, garnets, and gold, but was richer still in political and sexual intrigue. Above all else, Cleopatra was a shrewd strategist and an ingenious negotiator.
Though her life spanned fewer than forty years, it reshaped the contours of the ancient world. She was married twice, each time to a brother. She waged a brutal civil war against the first when both were teenagers. She poisoned the second. Ultimately she dispensed with an ambitious sister as well; incest and assassination were family specialties. Cleopatra appears to have had sex with only two men. They happen, however, to have been Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, among the most prominent Romans of the day. Both were married to other women. Cleopatra had a child with Caesar and–after his murder–three more with his protégé. Already she was the wealthiest ruler in the Mediterranean; the relationship with Antony confirmed her status as the most influential woman of the age. The two would together attempt to forge a new empire, in an alliance that spelled their ends. Cleopatra has lodged herself in our imaginations ever since.
Famous long before she was notorious, Cleopatra has gone down in history for all the wrong reasons. Shakespeare and Shaw put words in her mouth. Michelangelo, Tiepolo, and Elizabeth Taylor put a face to her name. Along the way, Cleopatra’s supple personality and the drama of her circumstances have been lost. In a masterly return to the classical sources, Stacy Schiff here boldly separates fact from fiction to rescue the magnetic queen whose death ushered in a new world order. Rich in detail, epic in scope, Schiff ‘s is a luminous, deeply original reconstruction of a dazzling life.
Describe Books As Cleopatra: A Life
| Original Title: | Cleopatra: A Life |
| ISBN: | 0316001929 (ISBN13: 9780316001922) |
| Edition Language: | English URL https://www.littlebrown.com/titles/stacy-schiff/cleopatra/9780316001922/ |
| Characters: | Cleopatra |
| Setting: | Alexandria(Egypt) Ptolemaic Egypt(Egypt) |
| Literary Awards: | PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography (2011), Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for History and Biography (2010) |
Rating Epithetical Books Cleopatra: A Life
Ratings: 3.67 From 94499 Users | 5113 ReviewsComment On Epithetical Books Cleopatra: A Life
What I learned from this book (in no particular order): 1. Cleo was an insatiable vamp who seduced two of the most powerful men in Rome using her feminine wiles. Cleo might have used her wiles to seduce them, but both Julius and Mark were hardly paragons of chastity themselves: Julius specialized in seducing aristocratic wives, while Mark had numerous affairs with both single and married women.2. Cleo looked like Elizabeth Taylor with too much mascara. We just dont really know how she looked.It's amazing what a rich portrait Schiff created when we have so few sources to draw from about Cleopatra's life.
Beginning a month (or forty days) of biographies, I thought I would work through this buddy read. In her biography of Cleopatra, Schiff takes the reader along a winding adventure into the world before the Common Era, where actions to unite came at the cost of land and life, both bloody endeavours. Born into the Ptolemaic dynasty that ruled Egypt, Cleopatra was of Macedonia Greek origin at a time of much political and geographic change. Her family ruled over the region with an iron fist and would
"When Egypt Ruled the East" by George Steindorff this book is not.I have read many books on Egyptian history all the way up through the Ptolemies who, somehow, through some sort of rhetorical magic, were made to be as dry and dull as dead leaves in winter in "Cleopatra: A Life." I have read many history books. I consider myself a bit of a connoisseur of the genre. I even inhale historical fiction. Some of these books have been utter and complete crap. I have manned up and finished books that
Perhaps of all the historic characters we think we know, but dont, Cleopatra ranks at the top of the list. Sometimes a legend is so well-known that we lose track of the fact that a real human being was living this story, fighting these battles, and harboring these emotions. What an extraordinary person she must have been to have lived through so much in her short thirty-nine years and to have influenced history in the way that she did. First fact that I did not know. She was Cleopatra VII.
The author clearly loved her subject--but the combination of a serious lack of hard evidence and a writing style I found pretentious significantly diminished my enjoyment of this book. While meticulously researched, the lack of verifiable evidence leads the author to take a series of side-notes that describe, in extensive detail, subjects only tangentially related to Cleopatra. The first half of the book was very difficult to get through because of this; it would perhaps have been better suited
Released to rave reviews and the full packaging monty of its publisher, Stacy Schiffs Cleopatra took the NYT by storm in 2011, remaining there for months. And no wonder! This kamikaze of masterly writing, meticulous and thorough research, and humanizing hand of the author did a spectacular job of unmasking the woman behind the myth and debunking the lies we today call slander. This is the biography of Queen Cleopatra VII Philopator (as the title implies) but it is done unlike any other.
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