BOOK ON HELLENIC ARMY CONTRIBUTION TO WORLD WAR I JUST PUBLISHED
Athens, 26 April 2001- The Hellenic Army's /Army History Directorate edition titled 'A Concise History of the Participation of the Hellenic Army in the First War War 1914-1918' was just published in English. This edition includes sketchmaps, photographs and tables and represents the official version published by the Greek Ministry of Defense. The English edition was prepared in collaboration with our firm. For more details see under Military History in this site.
CONTACT US FOR YOUR GRATIS DESK COPIES SOON
Crestwood, NY, 8 April 2001- Now is the time for faculty deciding on the texts to be used in the Fall, 2001 Semester to contact us about desk copies for review. It will also be helpful to us to let us know about your desire to use textbook titles that may happen to be out of stock. A timely notice from faculty gives us the gentle push we need to bring titles back in stock.
WHY POSTAGE IS NOT SHOWN IN THE ORDER FORM
Crestwood, NY, 22 February 2001- Certain customers brought to our attention the fact that the postage and handling costs are not indicated in our order form. The reason for that is that our customers are spread worldwide and it is not practical for us to program a calculation for these costs. Thus, they are added when the invoice is actually prepared. As a rule, in the USA books are mailed via UPS, outside the country books are mailed via the US Postal Service, Surface Rate. Customers who need courier or other service must indicate this in their orders.
ALLEN & GREENOUGH OUT OF STOCK NOTICE
Crestwood, NY, 31 January 2001- Allen & Greenough's New Latin Grammar just went out of stock. We expect to bring back in stock both the clothbound and paper cover version late Spring or early Summer of this year. Our apologies especially to instructors and their students of latin classes in high schools, colleges and universities, but the demand was brisker than expected (presumably because this web site expanded our communications capability greatly ). Please check this site at regular intervals for notice of availability.
COLLEGE CLASSICAL SERIES: Two New Titles Forthcoming
New York, 14 October 2000- We are pleased to announce two forthcoming titles in this series. One fills a need in the teaching of New Testament Greek, the other on the Greek element in English. They are,
Reading the Gospel of St. John in Greek: A Beginning
With Introduction, Notes, Vocabulary and Grammatical Appendix
by Norbert H. O. Duckwitz; and,
Everyday Greek: Greek Words in English, Including Scientific Terms
by Horace Addison Hoffman
Bibliographical details and price will be posted in the near future.
New York, 1 Oct 2000- Welcome to Philobiblos Notes, our firm's electronic newsletter. Please make a habit of checking in with us at regular intervals as this is the venue for information and comment that allows for more immediate communication with our friends and customers. Messages will be dated and numbered for future reference and customer responses may be published if our editors deem that these may be helpful to our audience. Today's messages are:
(#1) Our newly redesigned and reorganized site went live, on line today. The new site provides, (a) a direct and secure on line ordering function to assure the swiftest service; (b) a thorough and efficient search function for all information stored on this site (by author, title, subject etc.); (c) constantly updated availability information under the Status field in each entry ("In Stock," "Out of Stock," "Not Yet Published," and "Out of Print.") Title information will be posted real time. This eliminates the need for most correspondence and telephone calls as to the status of a particular title. (d) for any questions of comments, please do not hesitate to e-mail or call 800-204-2665 or 914-961-2203 There are still some imperfections, for which we ask your understanding and which we are working to correct. Meanwhile we look forward to providing you with significantly improved service.
(#2) This year marks the 25th anniversary since the founding of our firm. As many of you may be aware, Caratzas/Melissa was founded to meet the need for textbooks in Greek and Latin, at a time when the exigencies of the market drove other publishers away from the Classics and the humanities. The College Classical Series was initiated at the time, and it is still very much- or even more alive today. Since that time we have published scholars and other authors in fields such as archaeology, art history, history, philology and related fields. It is with some satisfaction that we can look back to recognition and prizes our authors have received for projects-become-books, other houses were reticent to handle. We also publish works in international relations and policy studies. It has always been our sense that informed participation in the public debate about national policies represents a special duty for publishers, even (or perhaps especially) for small specialized houses such as ours. The humanities have provided approaches to recurring issues (often in transformed guises) that challenge mankind. The fortunes of our times have led to new geopolitical circumstances over the last decade. As a result, understanding areas and cultures in which Caratzas/Melissa chose to specialize and build a significant network of collaborators and accumulated knowledge, have come to the forefront of international events. Our firm is making a modest contribution to the general knowledge about peoples and cultures in regions such as the Balkans, Asia Minor (most of it in present day Turkey), and those that are part of what some scholars have referred to as the Late Roman or Byzantine Commonwealth. History (etymologically cognate to the Greek verb for "to know"), represents an accumulation and recording of knowledge, which of course can take many forms or expressions. Actions outside of its context (such as many US Government policies relating to the above mentioned regions) can be said to reflect not only arrogance, but profound and dangerous ignorance. Caratzas/Melissa efforts have profited as a result of collaboration with some outstanding scholars and academic centers. Notable products of these efforts are the works in the series Hellenism: Ancient, Mediaeval, Modern and Subsidia Balcanica, Islamica et Turcica, both produced under the general editorship of Professor Speros Vryonis, Jr., Dr. Christos P. Ioannides and Professor Stylianos Spyridakis, in collaboration with the Speros Basil Vryonis Center for the Study of Hellenism. The last, until recently headed by Prof. Vryonis, now by Dr. Ioannides, represents as of this writing perhaps the most thorough effort to establish the universal dimensions of Greek civilization on the highest academic and professional level. Our current editorial directions lead us not only to collaborations with scholars and academic centers in the United States, but also outside, from Britain, Germany and Greece to Russia and further east. This is necessary at a time in which we are witnessing the development of a paradox in some American academic settings: the onset of an educational parochialism coupled with crude apologies for imperialist projects (such as th attack on Yugoslavia). The emphasis on linking humanities to policy studies provides a matrix that can provide a more sophisticated understanding of events and actions..
(#3) Today also marked the last day of the Olympic Games held at Sydney, Australia. Over the last two weeks those interested witnessed some predictably impressive athletic performances. The television images and descriptions of the events were saturated by cliches and kitsch, both in terms of words and images. The scale of the Olympic event and the emptiness of its non-athletic aspect brings to mind a work we published in 1986, which we have kept in print. John Hoberman's The Olympic Crisis: Sport, Politics and the Moral Order (ISBN 0-89241-224-0, clothbound) is perhaps the best documented history of the political and social dimension of the modern Olympic revival (it includes sources in all major languages and an extensive bibliography). The author demonstrates that, far from being a neutral phenomenon- as its founders and current proponents maintain- the Olympics became the vehicle to advance a number of questionable agendas. Hitler, Stalin and a host of other players in the twentieth century used the Games for purposes of political gain and legitimation seemingly without resistance by the leadership of the Olympic movement. One of the many ironies Hoberman entertains is that of a conservative International Olympic Committee leadership eagerly inviting Soviet participation after being hosted by Stalin. Hoberman does not touch on th latest direction that the exploitation of the Olympic movement has taken, namely that of rampant and often squalid commercialization, which has enlisted professional athletes and thereby violating one of its foundational ideas.