Caroline Alexander

Chronicles Shackleton in Antarctica, where he and his crew were stranded for twenty months

Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition

The Endurance

Homer

With her virtuoso translation, classicist and bestselling author Caroline Alexander brings to life Homer’s timeless epic of the Trojan War Composed around 730 B.C., Homer’s Iliad recounts the events of a few momentous weeks in the protracted ten-year war between the invading Achaeans, or Greeks, and the Trojans in their besieged city of Ilion. From the explosive confrontation between Achilles, the greatest warrior at Troy, and Agamemnon, the inept leader of the Greeks, through to its tragic conclusion, The Iliad explores the abiding, blighting facts of war. Soldier and civilian, victor and vanquished, hero and coward, men, women, young, old—The Iliad evokes in poignant, searing detail the fate of every life ravaged by the Trojan War. And, as told by Homer, this ancient tale of a particular Bronze Age conflict becomes a sublime and sweeping evocation of the destruction of war throughout the ages. Carved close to the original Greek, acclaimed classicist Caroline Alexander’s new translation is swift and lean, with the driving cadence of its source—a translation epic in scale and yet devastating in its precision and power.

A New Translation by Caroline Alexander

The Iliad

NATIONAL BEST SELLER • A riveting account of Shackleton's famed Antarctic expedition, recounting one of the last great adventures in the Heroic Age of exploration—perhaps the greatest of them all—the shipwreck that stranded the crew for twenty months. Including never-before published photographs. In August 1914, days before the outbreak of the First World War, the renowned explorer Ernest Shackleton and a crew of twenty-seven set sail in their ship, Endurance, for the South Atlantic in pursuit of the last unclaimed prize in the history of exploration: the first crossing on foot of the Antarctic continent. Weaving a treacherous path through the freezing Weddell Sea, they had come within eighty-five miles of their destination when Endurance, was trapped fast in the ice pack. Soon the ship was crushed like matchwood, leaving the crew stranded on the floes. Their ordeal would last for twenty months, and they would make two near-fatal attempts to escape by open boat before their final rescue. Drawing upon previously unavailable sources, Caroline Alexander gives us an enthralling account of Endurance and Shackleton's expedition—one of history's greatest epics of survival. And she presents the astonishing work of Frank Hurley, the Australian photographer whose visual record of the adventure has never before been published comprehensively. Together, text and image re-create the terrible beauty of Antarctica, the awful destruction of the ship, and the crew's heroic daily struggle to stay alive, a miracle achieved largely through Shackleton's inspiring leadership. The survival of Hurley's remarkable images is scarcely less miraculous: The original glass plate negatives, from which most of the book's illustrations are superbly reproduced, were stored in hermetically sealed cannisters that survived months on the ice floes, a week in an open boat on the polar seas, and several more months buried in the snows of a rocky outcrop called Elephant Island. Finally Hurley was forced to abandon his professional equipment; he captured some of the most unforgettable images of the struggle with a pocket camera and three rolls of Kodak film. Published in conjunction with the American Museum of Natural History's landmark exhibition on Shackleton's journey.

The Iliad is still the greatest poem about war that our culture has ever produced. For a hundred generations, poets and thinkers in the West have pored over, retold and argued about the events described in this martial epic, even when direct knowledge of it was lost. Various empires have admired it as a book that in telling the story of the siege of Troy also extols the warrior ethic, and teaches the young how to die well. Yet the figure at the heart of the epic, the consummate warrior Achilles, is a brooding, controversial hero. He is a fierce critic of those who have started this war and allowed it to drag on, consuming soldiers and civilians alike. Disconcertingly, The Iliad portrays war as a catastrophe that destroys cities, orphans children and wrecks whole societies. Caroline Alexander's extraordinary book is not about any of the traditional concerns that have occupied classicists for centuries. It is simpler and more radical than that. In her words, 'This book is about what the Iliad is about; this book is about what the Iliad says of war.'

The War That Killed Achilles

The bestselling author of The Endurance reveals the startling truth behind the legend of the Mutiny on the Bounty -- the most famous sea story of all time. More than two centuries have passed since Fletcher Christian mutinied against Lt. Bligh on a small armed transport vessel called Bounty. Why the details of this obscure adventure at the end of the world remain vivid and enthralling is as intriguing as the truth behind the legend. Caroline Alexander focusses on the court martial of the ten mutineers captured in Tahiti and brought to justice in Portsmouth. Each figure emerges as a richly drawn character caught up in a drama that may well end on the gallows. With enormous scholarship and exquisitely drawn characters, The Bounty is a tour de force.

The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty

The Bounty

Michael Page

The True Story of Homer's Iliad and the Trojan War

The Deadly World War II Mission over the Roof of the World

Skies of Thunder

As a child in Florida, Caroline Alexander learnt Coleridge's masterpiece of a poem, Kubla Khan. Coleridge recalled that it was composed in an opium sleep as he was reading about Kubla Khan. He awoke and wrote fifty-five lines of the poem before being interrupted. Scholars have ever since discussed the contemporary works that had influenced Coleridge. In The Way to Xanadu, a literary travel book, Caroline Alexander recounts her quest across three continents to discover the sources of Coleridge's inspiration.

The Way to Xanadu

Joanna Sheen

A guide to growing and drying flowers describes drying methods, lists more than one hundred plants suitable for drying, and offers suggestions for dried flower arrangments

Dried Flower Gardening

The "Endurance"

Mrs Chippy sailed onboard Sir Ernest Shackleton's ship Endurance in 1914, patrolling the decks, keeping watch and mousing down below. This is her journal.

The Remarkable Journal of Shackleton's Polar-Bound Cat

Mrs Chippy's Last Expedition

A diary of an astute male cat, "Mrs. Chippy," documents his journey to Antarctica with human associate Harry "Chippy" McNeish, and the survival techniques he adapted after the ship was damaged, as well as details of his other duties, including watching for changes in weather and tormenting the sled dogs.

The Remarkable Journal of Shackleton's Polar-bound Cat

Mrs. Chippy's Last Expedition

A Seminole Football Team Revisited

Battle's End

Presents a history of England from the departure of Roman forces in 450 A. D. to the Norman invasion of 1066, focusing on the gold and silver artifacts of the Staffordshire Hoard found in 2009 to highlight the events and art of the period.

War, Treasure, and the Mystery of the Saxons

Lost Gold of the Dark Ages

As a child in Florida, Caroline Alexander learnt Coleridge's masterpiece of a poem, 'Kubla Khan'. Coleridge recalled that it was composed in an opium sleep as he was reading about Kubla Khan. He awoke and wrote fifty-five lines of the poem before being interrupted. Scholars have ever since discussed the contemporary works that had influenced Coleridge. In The Way to Xanadu, a literary travel book, Caroline Alexander recounts her quest across three continents to discover the sources of Coleridge's inspiration.

In July 2009 an amateur metal-detecting enthusiast made an astonishing find: 1500 pieces of bejeweled gold and silver almost 1500 years old, buried, lost, then forgotten. The treasure trove promises to shed unprecedented light on the most mysterious period of British history - the so-called Dark Ages - when the Saxons, Anglos, Celts, Picts, Jutes, and Vikings battled for control of the British Isles and "a mish mash of peoples evolved into a homogenous nation possessed with a strong cultural identity," according to New York Times bestselling author of the book, Caroline Alexander. Alexander, author of the bestselling The Endurance and The Bounty, draws themes from the story of the spectacular treasure to explore the entire fascinating history of the Saxons in England; from the fall of Rome to the flourishing and seemingly incomprehensible spread of Saxon influence. Piece by piece, she draws readers into a world of near constant warfare guided by a unique understanding of Christianity, blended as it was with pagan traditions. Through heroic and epic literature that survives in poems such as Beowulf and the Legends of King Arthur, Alexander seeks to separate myth from reality and wonder, with readers, if the circumstances of the deposit of such a spectacular hoard have parallels in legendary tales. Peering through a millennia of mist and mystery, Alexander reveals a fascinating era - and a mesmerizing discovery - as never before, uncovering a dynamic period of history that would see its conclusion in the birth of the English nation.

A REPRESENTAÇÃO COM PRECISÃO INIGUALÁVEL DE UMA DAS HISTÓRIAS MAIS ATEMPORAIS DA CIVILIZAÇÃO A guerra que matou Aquiles: A verdadeira história da Ilíada, diferentemente da maioria das obras sobre o tema, não aborda nenhuma das questões tradicionais da Ilíada. Os dramáticos eventos da Guerra de Troia são lendários, mas a Ilíada é completamente voltada para algumas poucas semanas ao fim de uma guerra que já durava dez anos. O foco da história não se dá no drama, mas numa verdade mais amarga: ambos os exércitos queriam o fim da guerra. No entanto, Caroline Alexander esmiúça a história e revela a visão do próprio Homero em relação à sua obra-prima. Uma analise sobre um conflito que trouxe apenas morte e miséria para os povos, sem ganho territorial para qualquer um dos lados.

A verdadeira história da Ilíada

A guerra que matou Aquiles

The author traces the footsteps of the nineteenth-century travel writer Mary Kingsley through equatorial Africa, witnessing the effects of a century of haphazard modernization

Caroline Alexander

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