When I finished this marvelously well written book I asked myself, who is this Lili Bita person and where has she been all my life?

The stories in this book show how a pre-modern society is structured by male dominance, ignorance, magic, superstition and idolatry. With one exception the stories are set in the rural areas of the Greek islands. Men run the whole show and make life and death decisions for women. Women suffer from men's stupidity and ignorance. Sometimes they die or are murdered -- in the name of family honor (men's honor).

The moral universe the characters inhabit forces them to resort to cruelty, violence or revenge as a way of dealing with the hypocricy they see around them but do not fully understand.

The stories are all erotically toned and the writer handles the sexual episodes with restraint -- but also with realism. Here sex is not something men and women do together; it is something men do to women. Women are not expected to enjoy it, and if they do their sense of morality becomes suspect.

These stories contain a wealth of symbol and metaphor of the kind that are appropriate to each situation, flow easily and naturally with the narrative, and do not cry out for attention.

In the future I hope to see a lot more of Lili Bita's work in print. I found no flaws in this amazing book.

This book was assigned in my history course last semester. I wish it were more lively and that it made its points better.

(...)compared to many other college History texts, this one triumphs....)

I'll say this at least: It is no accident that the local university has stocked up on Greave's CIVILIZATIONS OF THE WEST. This is an outstanding volume in terms of breadth of information, coverage of social and cultural life, illustrations and organization of material. A distinguishing feature of the volume, adding to the aesthetically pleasing layout and quality of information, are inset boxes. With literary excerpts and writings from intellectuals and ordinary people of the times these boxes add vividness and immediacy to History studies, bringing one a little closer to people and events. Overall, this is an excellent book, to be used in conjunction with J.M.G ROBERTS, TRIUMPH OF THE WEST (or, HISTORY OF THE WORLD, by the same author, published by Penguin books).

I had this history book the first semester of my freshman year in college and let me tell you, it is a very dry book. There is a lot of unnecessary information and all the little details make it even worse. Also, some of the information is dusty while some of the points the author points out are very arguable and seem untrue. Once again, this is a very dry book.

For teachers and amateur historians, this is a very readable text. Plus, the layout is nice and easy to look at. It also offers a reasonably good bibliography as well as chapter summaries. All in all it is user-friendly