The “confidence men” of Margalit Fox’s title, two British prisoners of war who planned the most eccentric and devious of all escapes, had plenty of both. But inducing them to believe in something that their senses and experience tell them is plainly unreal or untrue-unicorns, papal infallibility, Trump’s assertions, ghosts-requires art and almost manic self-confidence. Persuading them to change their minds and like something else is a skill. not a boring or badly written paragraph in it.Persuading people to like something is a trade. urgent argument: about culture, national identity, the misuse of history, archaeology, the co-existence of different peoples, the responsibility of intellectuals.
“A beautifully written meditation on nationality, colonialism, nomadism and the settled life, which goes back to the beginning of the human world and traces the fortunes of the Aegean and Mediterranean traders who squeezed up through the Bosporus to do business with the steppe societies of the huge Black Sea hinterland.” - Karl Miller, San Francisco Review of Books “To say it at once: this is a superb book, beautifully written, evocative, learned, and deeply subtle.” - Timothy Garton Ash, The Times Literary Supplement
“History and time and place flow together superb, encompassing story of the Black Sea region.” - Mary Lee Settle, Los Angeles Times Ascherson's portrait of a place whose chief characteristic is the durability of its many ethnic identities comes at the right moment.” - Richard Bernstein, The New York Times With ethnic conflicts much in the headlines, Mr.
rich both in historical data and in interpretation. “A searching examination of the lands that ring the Black Sea and that were the scenes of some of the most ancient multicultural experiences of human history.
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