“Swords and Sandals” movies always amaze me. You know the ones I’m talking about: “Spartacus,” “Ben-Hur,” “Gladiator,” and the rest. These movies are so rich in detail–both narrative and physical–that you feel like you are “there.” But the fact is that we don’t and really can’t know much about “there” (wherever “there” happens to be in the Ancient World) because the sources are very, very thin. As Joyce Tyldesley points out in her terrific Cleopatra: Last Queen of Egypt (Basic Books, 2008), Cleopatra is a mystery and necessarily so. We don’t know who her mother was, when she was born, what she looked like, whom she married, and a host of other details about her life. That means, of course, that every dramatist from Shakespeare on has been, well, making stuff up about Cleopatra. Actually, many of the “primary sources” about her are full of invention because they were written long after the events they describe by Roman authors who just didn’t like her very much. They did like a good story, so they embellished, as any good storyteller will. Joyce is an excellent storyteller herself, but she takes no poetic license. She tells us just what can be known–and trust me, that’s more than enough to hold our attention! This book is a great read for anyone interested in learning about the real world of Ptolemaic Egypt.

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Tim Snyder has written a great book. It’s called The Red Prince: The Secret Lives of A Habsburg Archduke (Basic, 2008). Of course it’s thoroughly researched. Tim’s read all the literature and visited all the archives. Of course it’s historically revealing. Tim’s told a story that no one has told before. And of course it’s relevant. The book is about empires becoming nations, an ongoing process in Russia, China, and India. We expect all this from a top-notch historian working in a field he knows like the back of his hand. But Tim has done more. He’s written a serious history book that is enjoyable to read. How’d he do it? Well, Tim’s picked the right subject: an Eastern European prince with dreams of uniting a “nation” that didn’t exist. Did I mention said prince liked to dress as a woman, consort with sailors, and slum in Montmartre? Tim’s picked the right voice: witty, knowing, and ironic, but never sarcastic. Irony is hard; sarcasm is easy. Tim’s picked the right style: rich enough to delight, but spare enough to let the story shine through. Think of Hemingway with the occasional understated joke. I’ve long aspired to write a book like this. Now that I’ve read one, maybe I can.

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Today we are happy to have Colin Grant on the show. Colin is that rare breed of writer who is also an excellent historian. Or is that “rare breed of historian who is also an excellent writer?” I’m not sure, but I can tell you that Negro With A Hat: The Rise and Fall of Marcus Garvey (Oxford UP, 2008) is a great book. The subject matter couldn’t be more interesting and the prose is as delightful as it is instructive. There are many laugh-out-loud, I-wish-I were-that-clever sentences in this book: “Scott was not to know that the UNIA leader was of the school of thought that translated ‘no’ as ‘maybe’ and maybe’ as ‘yes.'” And many others that will make you sad. Grant is that kind of writer and Garvey that kind of figure. Go buy this book. Then read it.

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This week we feature an interview with Abigail Foerstner about her new book, James Van Allen: The First Eight Billion Miles (University of Iowa Press, 2007). Dr. Foerstner teaches news writing and science writing at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. In addition, Dr. Foerstner served as a staff reporter for the suburban sections of the Chicago Tribune for ten years, where she wrote articles about science and the environment. She is the author of Picturing Utopia: Bertha Shambaugh and the Amana Photographers (University of Iowa Press, 2000), as well as multiple articles on science, history and the visual arts. Her newest book, James Van Allen: The First Eight Billion Light Miles, took her seven years to research and write. Carl McIlwain, research professor of physics at University of California at San Diego, claims that “This in-depth portrayal of the life and work of an important twentieth-century scientist should take an important place both as a biography of an interesting life and as a resource for future historians of space physics.”

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