How to Be

Nicolson crafts a geography of the ancient world and a brilliant exploration of our connections to the past.What is the nature of things?What is justice? How can I be myself?How should we treat ea ...

Nicolson crafts a geography of the ancient world and a brilliant exploration of our connections to the past.What is the nature of things?What is justice? How can I be myself?How should we treat each other?Before the Greeks, the idea of the world was dominated by god-kings and their priests. Twenty-five hundred years ago, in a succession of small eastern Mediterranean harbor cities, a few heroic men and women decided to cast off mental subservience and apply their own thinking minds to the conundrums of life.These great innovators shaped the beginnings of western philosophy. Through the questio