The promotion by Open Road of Glory and the Lightning that I was expecting two weeks ago, finally happened today. My consultant there explained to me that sometimes, when there are several TC volumes, they appear in a pack with over 1000 other offerings. Apparently, that's what happened previously. Now that I know that, I am left to figure out how to adjust to it (he didn't know html so was not able to offer advice).

I'll figure it out and do what I wish: Concentrate on featuring what does make TC exceptional. The book promotion with links to the different publishers is below.

I chose the color for this background to go with one hue associated to the conflagration that envelopes California and Oregon. Not where I live in Colorado where we get daily warnings to stay indoors to avoid 2.5 ml particulate that comes out a tarnished

silver from the Climate afflicted prairie fires.

I suppose it takes some mental capacity to imagine events not especially happening to you, and to recognize that if they are happening to millions of people they can't really be all your personal enemies. But not too much.

In this, TC's furthest look back to birth of some form of Democracy, she uses this attractive heroine, Aspasia, as her mouthpiece. Since way more than 1/3rd of the novel is from a period without historical record, I will continue with that before going on (later) to the other two novel parts where Pericles, the leader of Athens enters and meets, the now already famous Aspasia.

Part I, to which I refer to here has Aspasia speaking within a sort of court of the hetaera, Thargelia (and under her protection) to those privy to the changes back in those early 400 BC years. Later, in a marriage to a powerful, intelligent, Persian Satrap wherein the two have serious conversations despite the heterosexual constraints of the time. Even if you can't accept the possibility of this relation – I can't imagine a serious historian who could ; but we should all be allowed our opinions, shouldn't we? – we can attempt to see the intelligence of TC.

Here she engages the political struggle of those times as, eventually, Greece (especially Athens and Sparta) successfully fend off one of the greatest Empires in human history.

It is, though the time after Thermopolae, and antagonisms between nations and peoples aren't analogous to what we are hearing today. A bit that is because the Greek city-states weren't akin to anything like our nations. Too, the possibility of dealing with a small group of citizens among a much larger group of various types of slaves have only a loose and complicated parallel with what has happened in our nation's history.

Some would say that is – albeit arguably – a mark of progress. TC, I'm certain would argue against that. She has contended often, vociferously, that nothing in man ever ''really'' changes. That is a very large escape hatch that ''really.''

So, I point to Aspasia's conversation with her brilliant Greek teacher, Aeneas on the nature of slavery.

ASPASIA: Solon declared that all men should be free. We have slaves. Is not a slave a man?

AENEAS: We believe a slave to be a thing, not a man. The gods ordained his fate. The gods ordained freedom for men. If a man is not born free, then he is not truly human.

A snatch of conversation between one, thankfully well-protected very young female [who was not included among the many female slaves, who could not escape the slave pedigree despite no official slave status], who impudently calls out Aeneas on his syllogism. (Again, if I were interacting with a class, I would pause for quite a discussion on what exactly this reference to syllogism is about.)

ASPASIA: [called out by Aeneas to explain herself] continues. Solon was a great and wise man. He desired to establish a republic, but Athens has declined into a democracy. Therein is a great tragedy in government. … [yet] he declared all men free … [without distinguishing between] slave and free.

AENEAS: ignores this. Then discourses on the nature of Athens and Sparta and the armies of Xerxes, and the events at Thermopylae. Then a considerable way with what is TC's view of the nature of man. The nature of heroism. The conundrum that madness is akin to divinity. Then, the continuation of the distinction between a republic and a democracy. All this in about 6 extended pages.

To say no more of TC than that it's all a rollicking good tale, in these long, dense, novels, as so many reviews of the kind below do, seems strange to me. That review ignored that close to half of the novel has not a whit to do with the review. Especially since TC seemed to know her audience.

Glory and the Lightning

By Taylor Caldwell


$2.99 $17.99


EXPIRES 9/19/20


Bestseller, Historical Fiction



 

New York Times bestseller

A saga of ancient Greece—and one of history’s most influential political couples, Aspasia and Pericles—filled with tumultuous love affairs, gripping power struggles, and the terrors of plague and war.

“Puts you right into the classic picture.” —The New York Times Book Review

 

 

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Michael Fried, Grandson
For the Descendants of Taylor Caldwell
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