Kevin Jackson. 1922. Constellation of genius.

Dissembled banter of an upper-class Englishman but not without its amusing qualities. Does not mention science much. Einstein appears as a guru on a par with Gurdjieff and Alistair Crowley. But his artistic tastes are generally sound.

Mary Beard, Confronting the Classics: Traditions, Adventures and Innovation. Liveright, 2013.

In the beginning of D. Lieven's review, I said a few harsh words about the state of humanities in Britain. However, Mary Beard is a happy exception of the sorry state of humanities on the Isles. Even her extremes: the demand that archeological or paleographic data must come from exactly the same period as the period of study with no conjectures, look amusing. (If, e.g. we have clay tablets with cuneiform from one Babylonian dynasty and then, from the next to next, how probable that Babylonians communicated by the Internet in between? Can a historian definitely assume that Bismark never contemplated conversion to Islam, even that exact contents of his thought are lost forever?)

She goes so far as to propose that Alexander the Great is largely a Roman invention  to justify the politics of unlimited conquest. (were the Ptolemaic and Selevkid dynasties controlling gigantic territories also propagandist inventions?) Another fantastic assertion is that Caligula and Nero were normal because she can spot some underlying logic in their behavior (in fact, psychopaths and schizophrenics can be very logical).

But the fact, that her book is mostly series of book reviews written not in a fawning or, conversely, derogatory-condescending style so typical for modern reviews and takes issues with modern portrayals of antiquity as well, definitely finds a sympathetic ear (?) with this author.