Customer Reviews (1)

Macedonia
For a country that struggles even with its official name, Macedonia is a survivor.Landlocked, it must depend on good relations with its neighbors, even when some of those neighbors would prefer it not to exist.In the case of Greece, Macedonia has faced opposition to nearly everything an independent nation should have a natural right to do.Though relations have tempered between Greece and Macedonia, there still is work to do on improvment.

This book gives a decent background on this country that has been part of the world scene for two thousand years.Macedonians like Alexander the Great have made their mark on the world.The challenge for modern Macedonians is to follow in those footsteps.It is unfortunate that most Americans have no idea where Macedonia is located or that it even exists, because it has its rich culture and heritage and has been a player in world affairs long before America was even discovered. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (2)

Thumb's up
The mini-bios accompanying the text are a great innovation -- very lively and dramatic. What a cast of characters!

same quality as Heckel's Marshals
If you liked Heckel's book "Marshals of Alexander", you will like this one too. Beth Carney writes good, short biographies of the important women that were around in Alexander's time. I might disagree on deatils with her view e.g. on Roxane, but this is a thorough, serious and especially very readable scholarly study. I have waited two years since its publication before I bought it. I wished I had not. ... Read more

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The numerous Neolithic finds from the territory of the Republic of Macedonia show an abundance of data which can be concentrated into different relations. They all approach certain ideas through which we attempt to learn about the character of Neolithic populations and their way of life. Within the context of the explored Neolithic settlements from the Republic of Macedonia, a large number of ceramic finds (decorated vessels, figurines, seals, models of houses and altars) are discussed in this study. The first chapter gives a brief introduction and acquaintance with the territory and its condition during the time of all Neolithic phases. Chapter two elaborates the white painted vessels originating from whole territory of the Republic of Macedonia. Chapters three and four deal with the painted compositions from the Middle Neolithic. In the chapter Imprints of the Neolithic Mind the ceramic stamps and the patterns which are usually engraved on them are presented. The second part of the book elaborates the concepts of corporeality present in the several ceramic figurative forms, including burials. Subsequent chapters are dedicated to the anthropomorphic vessels, placed in a wider context with those excavated in the Neolithic from south-eastern Europe, as well as later phases. The last chapter, 'Housing the Dead', completes the concept of burials in vessels, oven forms, and ceramic houses. ... Read more

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In this single-volume history, R. Malcolm Errington provides a modern account of the political and social framework of ancient Macedon. He places particular emphasis on the structure of the Macedonian state and its functioning in different stages of historical development from the sixth to the second century B.C. Errington's main emphasis is not on the biographies of the great kings but rather on the flexible political interplay between king, nobility, and people; on the growth of cities and their political function within the state; and on the development of the army as a motor of military, social, and politicalchange. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Superb scholarly piece of work about Ancient Greek Macedonia
For all those interested in a substantiated unbiased piece of academic work about ancient Macedonia this book is nothing short of superb!

Very informative book!
This book is a very good introduction to the history of Macedonia (which, by the way, has nothing to do with the so-called Slavic country of FYROM "Macedonia" today) I found the reading enjoyable. This book is a great buy!

Great!
This is a very scholarly and wonderful book about the history of Macedonia. For those interested in Phillip II and his son Alexander the Great, this book gives a general history of the period and of the people involved.

An accurate and consice history of the Ancient Macedonians
M Errington's review is both accurate and timely, given the attempts by countries that are Greece's neighbors to usurp the name and the history of this most influential northern Greek kingdom. It is, perhaps along with U Wilckens' and N Hammond's the most fact-based. I have read it twice along with Borza's "In the Shadows of Olympus" and find it the most objective. Readers can see for themselves. Errington clearly illuminates the political
-that is what they were-differences between the Macedonians and the other Greeks. But most importantly he underscores Phillip's skillful political manoeuvres by which he outwitted the Southern Greeks and finally divided and conquered them. (The Anglo-Saxons certainly have learned from him as can be seen in the last 150 years).

Dr. Nick Papanikolaou

An excellent and accurate source of Macedonian history
Although I acquired this book by a different source than Amazon (before I discovered Amazon.com), I feel I should write a review, especially after reading the first review by the reader from NY.

This book is very well written and, I believe, will always be a great source of historical info. for myself and my daughter.

Mr. Errington's research and conclusions as to the ethnic makeup of the ancient Macedonians are not only correct they appear to be necessary in light of today's wave of self-serving history revisionism.

QUESTION #1: WHAT WAS THE LANGUAGE OF THE ANCIENT MACEDONIANS?

Here's what a couple of ancient (and obviously unbiased) sources say:

The Roman writer Titus Livius says : (from "The Foundation of the City", Paragraph 31)

"The Aitolians, the Akarnanians, the Macedonians, men of the same language, are united or disunited by trivial causes that arise from time to time; with aliens, with barbarians, all Greeks wage and will wage eternal war; for they are enemies by the will of nature, which is eternal, and not from reasons that change from day to day."

Didorus of Sicily (17.67.1) says:

(...) And the rest of the Greeks?

Pausanias writes in his book "Description of Greece" (10.3.3):

"The Phocians were deprived of their share in the Delphic sanctuary and in the Greek assembly, and their votes were given by the Amphictyons to the Macedonians."

and also in his book "Phokis" (8,2 & 4):

"They say that these were the tribes collected by Amphiktyon himself in the Hellenic Assembly: [...] the Macedonians joined and the entire Phocian race [...] In my day there were thirty members: six from each of Nikopolis, Macedonia and Thessaly [...] "

Aeschines (On the Embassy 2.32) gives evidence of the Macedonian king Amyntas taking part at the congress of the Lacedaemonian allies and the other Greeks:

"For at a congress of the Lacedaemonian allies and the other Greeks, in which Amyntas, the father of Philip, being entitled to a seat, was represented by a delegate whose vote was absolutely under his control, he joined the other Greeks in voting to help Athens to recover possession of Amphipolis. As proof of this I presented from the public records the resolution of the Greek congress and the names of those who voted".

Isocratis, one of the most impotant orators of ancient Greece says in his speach "To Philip" addressed to King Philip II of Macedonia (Paragaraph 127):

(...) The Sicilian historian Diodoros says in his history about King Philip of Macedonia (Diodoros, Historical Library 16.95.1-2)

"Such was the end of Philip, who had made himself the greatest of the kings in Europe in his time, and because of the extent of his kingdom had made himself a throned companion of the twelve gods. He had ruled twenty-four years. He is known to fame as one who with but the slenderest resources to support his claim to a throne won for himself the greatest empire in the Greek world, while the growth of his position was not due so much to his prowess in arms as to his adroitness and cordiality in diplomacy.

It is clear to see why special interest groups 'need' to separate ancient Macedonians from the rest of Greece. The new Slav Republic of "Macedonia" (FYROM), needs to establish some sort of link to the age of antiquity, in order to justify their self-proclaimed ethnic identity. It must be difficult to prove that you have some ancient local roots when your ancestors (Slavic tribes) descended on the Balkans about 800 years after the death of Alexander.

Books such as the Erringtons' are clearly needed in order to establish historical and cultural truth. Readers can simply judge for themselves.

Start with this book. ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Countries and Their Cultures, brought to you by Gale®, a part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses.The length of the article is 879 words.The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase.You can view it with any web browser.Covers the broad range of popular religious culture of the United States at the close of the twentieth century. Beliefs, practices, symbols, traditions, movements, organizations, and leaders from the many traditions in the pluralistic American community are represented. Also includes cults and phenomena that drew followers, such as Heaven's Gale and UFOs. ... Read more

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In one of the most important contributions to the study of Roman imperialism to appear in recent years, Robert Kallet-Marx argues for a less simplistic, more fluid understanding of the evolution of Roman power in the Balkans, Greece, and Asia Minor. He distinguishes between hegemonythe ability of the Romans to command obedience on the basis of a real or implied military threatand the later phenomenon of empire, demonstrating that Roman imperium was not the result of the sudden imposition of geographically defined provinces or permanent armies. Rather, the integration of the Greek world into a Roman imperial system was a complex process of evolution requiring mutual adaptation by both Romans and Greeks. ... Read more

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Little of the historiography of third-century Athens survives, and much of what we know--or might know--about the period has come down to us in inscriptions carved by Attic stonemasons of the time. In this book Stephen Tracy, the world's preeminent expert in this area, provides new insight into an unsettled and obscure moment in antiquity. ... Read more

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A celebration of settled "Gypsies" and music-dance in Greek Macedonia with CD. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Extraordinary
This book is, in a word, extraordinary; so is the accompanying CD recording, which gives in addition to music of the Macedonian Romany people, a slice of their life in cafes and markets. One hears their daily activities, the sale of pita, and various wares, as well as juke boxes and street sounds as the Mahala awakens.

Mahala, for those unaware, is the village ghetto to which Rom people are generally confined, although the anthropologists who compiled this book do not seem to know that it is Arabic for ghetto, and the same word used in North Africa and other Middle Eastern Muslim nations to describe the Jewish and Christian ghettos in which those dhimmi groups are similarly confined. Dhimmis are the non-Muslim minorities in Muslim lands, and their treatment (and in Muslim nation remains) generally described and defined by the Islamic laws of jihad.

Unlike most other recent books about the Rom, this one contains a massive amount of research on the lives and music of these people, as they live it; but what I like the most are the oral histories that provide readers with a real sense of the hardships suffered by the Rom in Greek Macedonia. While the book mentions the great and disastrous Turkish invasion of Greece in 1922, it does not note the great massacre of an estimated 150,000 Christian Greeks and Armenians in Smyrna on the Aegean coast that year. Thisundoubtedly included some Rom, as the town was then (as now) central on the Turkish coast.

But without knowing it, the authors have demonstrated some of the ill effects of Muslim rule, for they do discuss, via oral histories, the great liberation experienced by Greek Roma in 1924, when Turks were repatriated to Turkey and 1 million Greeks from Turkey to Greece. The latter may have lost some territory, but she gained liberation from Muslim oppression.

As Greeks from Turkey poured into Greece, the town fathers in Jumaya, for example, and presumably everywhere else the Roma then lived in Greece, began to allow the Roma to go to school with Greeks. Beforehand, the Turks had imposed separation on non-Muslim peoples. But with Turks gone, Greeks exiled the old cast system too, thereby relinquishing the system that had helped imprison Greek Roma in lives without equal education. Now, suddenly, the Rom could attend the same school as everyone else.

There are many wonderful features of this book, including the photographs and the music CD at its end. But make no mistake, the oral histories are the best feature, making this one of the best books on the Rom I have read to date.

--Alyssa A. Lappen

Bright Balkan Morning = Late Chicago Night!
Last night I planned to read this book for just a few minutes before going to sleep.Hours later, instead of sleeping I was transformed into the world of the Balkan Roma musicians and their incredible culture!I simply couldn't put this amazing book down.I love the stories and interviews with the old musicians, the informative history of the Roma people and their culture, the full-of-life photos, and the CD with soundscapes.All these pieces combine to give the reader a great view of a people and their heritage, and one that has been largely overlooked in the past.I found the work ethic of the musicians described in this book to be very inspirational.To be able to play all kinds of requests for days on end is really something to admire.Musicians of any genre could learn a whole lot from reading about the musicians in this book.Years ago, these authors turned me on to the subculture of polka in the USA (and made a polkaholic out of me) with their super "Polka Happiness" book.They have clearly done it again - informed the world about an incredibly rich culture that was largely hidden from view.

Big Fat Roma Music Book
This book responds to my interest in the social context of folk music and dance. The focus was on the lives of the people who make the music, in this case the Roma of Jumaya (Iriklia) in Greek Macedonia. The writers give you quite a rounded view, describing how the music is performed, at what kinds of events, how people relate to the music and each other, how the musicians see themselves and their occupation and how making a living as a Roma musician fits into Greek society. There is also a strong sense of history and how things have changed over time in many ways - the history of Roma in Greece and other Balkan countries, the specific history of Roma in Jumaya, and the stories of individual musicians and their families. The consistently positive way that the writers approach their subject is also refreshing - they describe how Roma have used music to survive and, in some cases, prosper, and how in doing so they have contributed to the multi-layered fabric of Greek-Macedonian ethnic identities.

What is especially interesting to me is the authors' view of how multi-ethnic society works in Greek Macedonia as compared to Bulgaria or Former Yugoslavia, and how the strategy of Roma musicians is different in these different countries. In Greek Macedonia the musicians play the music of all ethnic groups in order to maximize their flexibility and income. During multi-ethnic celebrations the musicians follow a strict policy of playing everyone's requests in the order requested, so that no one feels that they have priority. There is a fascinating description of an ethnically mixed wedding where the families have to adjust their various wedding traditions to accommodate each other, making it up as they go along to some extent.

The authors compare and contrast this with the approach taken by Roma musicians in other areas of the Balkans. In Kosovo in the 1980s the Roma musicians are said to have purposely selected music from traditions from other than Serbian and Albanian in order to avoid conflicts. In Bulgaria the wedding band tradition is described as leading to a new pan-Balkan "fusion" style which borrows from many cultures but still feels Bulgarian. Ultimately the motivation behind each strategy is the need of musicians to make a living.

The book is interesting reading from a North American perspective as well.Keil contrasts the multi-ethnic consciousness of Greeks, where the same person may have several types of ethnic and national identities simultaneously, with the concept of "multiculturalism" which he describes as slices of a pizza in which there are lots of ethnicities but everyone is either one thing or another. This raise the question of what is really going on in such immigrant nations as Canada and the United States.

The accompanying CD is a potpourri of sounds, including music of various types, and there is a section of the book describing the contents of the CD. Some of the track titles are Market Day in Jumaya, Afternoon at a Mahala Café, At Home in the Mahala, New Year's Party in Serres, Taverna Party at Nikisiani.The combination of the text, the many high quality black and white photos and the soundscape are successful in putting you into the experience, as much as this is possible. There was also a nice balance between Angeliki Keil's straight-forward and very readable reporting of the lives of the musicians and Charles Keil's more theoretical musings about ethnicity, the music and the role of the musicians. My only complaint about the book is its weight - it's printed on very heavy, glossy stock, no doubt adding to the quality of photographic reproductions, but it is so big and heavy that you pretty well have to read it sitting up.An alternate title could be, "Your Big Fat Roma Music Book."

Evocative, Engrossing, Encompassing
When you get Bright Balkan Morning you are likely to open it up and then leaf through it, looking at the photographs.After a few minutes of this you'll remove the CD from the inside back cover and put it on.Then you continue looking at the photos while listening to the sounds.

That in itself is a rich and satisfying experience.But don't stop there.Read the text!

It tells of Roma (aka Gypsy) musicians who have cornered the market on live music in polyglot Greek Macedonia.While they are at the bottom of the social order, anyone who wishes a proper wedding, festival, or party of any kind hires these musicians. The musicians generally perform in trios, one playing a bass drum while the other two play the zurna - a double-reed woodwind found throughout Eurasia and Africa. Their repertoire is drawn from the peoples who live in the area, or passed through at one time, and is sometimes more Oriental, sometimes more European - whatever the customer wants.

Keil and Keil give detailed accounts of several performances - a baptism, a wedding, and a saint's day festival - tell the life stories of a dozen or so musicians & family, and recount the broad history of the Roma in the Mediterranean as well as presenting a more focused account of their sojourn in Greek Macedonia.Blau's photographs range from intimate portraits, to dancers in full party whirl, through street scenes jumbled or measured, to serene landscapes.Some of his shots are so strikingly composed - the cover image, for example - that the effect is both subjective (Blau's aesthetic) and objective (we're looking at things, out there, in the world).Steven Feld's soundscapes give us the living flow of sound. Not only do we hear the twin zurnas flying through drum rhythms, but dancing feet, shouts of joy and exertion, motors churning, sheep braying, and Stevie Wonder piped in through a tinny sound system.

Bright Balkan Morning is a milestone.See it, hear it, read it.Take pleasure in it.

THEY'LL STEAL YOUR HEART, TOO
In the rich and wonderful BRIGHT BALKAN MORNING:Romani Lives and the Power of Music in Greek Macedonia(Wesleyan University Press.Includes a CD), Charles and Angeliki Vellou Keil write of how, since the earliest days of Byzantium, commentators have remarked, sometimes positively and sometimes negatively, on the power of the Romani people to "steal your heart."With its stunning photographs by Dick Blau and its evocative CD produced by Steven Feld, this book is just one more instance of stolen hearts.The Romani, who are sometimes called gypsies, have stolen the authors' hearts and are well on their way to stealing my heart as well.

I urge you to buy this book.I say so as someone who almost never reads anything published by an academic press.I am definitely not an anthropologist or a social scientist of any kind.What I know about the raw and the cooked doesn't get very far beyond my kitchen, but I couldn't put BRIGHT BALKAN MORNING down.This book ought to be that rare thing:an academic book with popular appeal.

The easiest way into the riches of BRIGHT BALKAN MORNING are Blau's black-and-white photographs of the Romani playing their instruments for weddings, wrestling matches, and the little parades that apparently form wherever they go.When the dances started up, I have a feeling that Blau joined in, for these pictures just pulled me along.I could smell the perfume in the grandmother's handkerchief as she held it out to Blau and, through him, to me, as we all danced together.I could see the textures of the road when I took my place in the wedding parade; I could almost hear the sound of the zurna (a kind of outdoor oboe) being played in my ear.

Of course Steven Feld's CD brings the actual sounds to life.The CD begins oh so slyly by introducing Romani music emerging from the ambient sounds of twentieth-century Macedonia.The Romani are, if nothing else, great survivors of history's cultural wars, and you can hear so many diverse musical strains-from the Muslim to the techno pop.Eerily enough, the rhythm of the dauli (a two-headed bass drum) being played sounds exactly like the bass-drum pounding at a high-school football pep rally.

I wasn't as happy with the book's writing style, but then the authors seem to be wrestling with shaping this heartfelt information of theirs into all the requirements of academic publishing, and that struggle oddly mirrors the lives of the Romani.This sometimes awkward prose becomes just one more instance of the dance the Romani inspire everywhere they go as they blend in and out of the moment's culture.

--R. M. Ryan
Duncans Mills, CA ... Read more

Product Description
Chapters: White Tower of Thessaloniki, Museum of Byzantine Culture, Byzantine Museum of Komotini, Byzantine Museum of Kastoria, Ecclesiastical Museum of Siatista. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 19. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: The White Tower of Thessaloniki (Greek: Lefkos Pyrgos), is a monument and museum on the waterfront of the city of Thessaloniki, capital of the region of Macedonia in northern Greece. Originally constructed by the Ottomans to fortify the city's harbour, it became a notorious prison and scene of mass executions during the period of Ottoman rule. It was substantially remodeled and its exterior was whitewashed after Greece gained control of the city in 1912. It has been adopted as the symbol of the city. The White Tower in 1912, showing the chemise that surrounded the tower until its demolition in 1917.The White Tower takes the form of a cylindrical drum 23 m (75 ft) in diameter with a height of 27 m (89 ft) above ground level, on top of which is a turret 12 m (39 ft) in diameter and 6 m (20 ft) high. Some of the embrasures in the outer wall of the tower are reached by a spiral ramp; others are accessed from a central room on each of the six floors. The turret houses a platform with a diameter of 10 m (33 ft), and the platform at the top of the main tower in front of the turret is about 5 m (16 ft) wide. The tower has been altered substantially over the years. Early illustrations show that it was originally covered by a conical roof, like similar towers in the Yedikule Fortress and Rumelihisar fortress in Istanbul. Until its demolition in 1917, a chemise stood at the foot of the tower, supporting the heavy guns and enclosing an area at least three times the diameter of the main tower. Octagonal turrets on the chemise and caponiers at ground level provided f...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=339521 ... Read more

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In telling his life story, Rev. Aaron Johnson takes us to the front lines of the fight for civil and human rights in our country over the last fifty years. Whether being beaten and dragged from a dime store lunch counter, standing blindfolded before a Ku Klux Klan meeting, or praying arm-in-arm with a death-row inmate, Johnson shows us how human hatred and fear smells, sounds and feels-and how it feels to empower others with hope and trust.
Told with humility and humor, Johnson's story reminds us that one individual-with focus and faith-can effect great change despite repeated hurdles. Readers will come to know Aaron Johnson as a friend and inspiring hero who suspects that God still has a few projects waiting for him on his to-do list. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

"God will make a way."
Aaron Johnson was one of seven children born to a woman with a fourth grade education. They lived in a 3-bedroom bungalow with no plumbing, running water, or electricity. Every morning, as her children shivered around the wood stove, Cassie Johnson sang to her Lord and spoke to her children: "Babies, don't rely on just yourselves. God will make a way for you somehow." And He did. Over and over, God directed Aaron Johnson's path, opening seemingly immovable doors to use him as a crucial link in the civil rights movement, as a pastor unafraid to proclaim the word of God, and as a passionate and compassionate reformer of the North Carolina prison system. The scene that will be forever etched in my mind is of Reverend Johnson entering a filthy, shrouded prison cell to comfort a female prisoner, dying of Aids and shunned by prison employees. The tenderness this man showed her is heart-wrenching and convicting. Man from Macedonia is a must-read for anyone who has ever doubted the worth of a single person's efforts. Aaron Johnson's story is a testimony to the power of God and the strength of a mother's prayers. Thank you, Reverend Johnson, and Deb Cleveland, for recording this story for generations who must never forget.

Compelling Read of a Modern-Day Hero

Aaron Johnson trod the footsteps of the Negro sharecropper in 1930s North Carolina, beat down the path to freedom with Civil Rights Marchers in the tumultuous 60s, and was even led blindfolded into a Ku Klux Klan meeting. With God whispering into his ear, Reverend Johnson juggled advisory positions with a pastoral calling.

I could barely read fast enough to keep pace with my curiosity of how God maneuvered Reverend Johnson into board rooms and crumbling jail cells. The Reverend's folksy, colloquial Southern voice drew me onto Death Row, where as Secretary of Corrections in North Carolina, Reverend Johnson battled prejudice, hatred, and political enemies to pull an antiquated, downright prison system into the 20th century.

Don't miss this compelling autobiography of one man's reliance on God through highs and lows most of us only imagine. Congratulations to Reverend Johnson and Ms. Cleveland! I only wish there was Volume II of The Man from Macedonia.

Must read to see God working in Civil Right Movement & Prisons
This book was an eye-opener for learning about the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s and 70s. There was much happening to keep things non-violent, and Rev. Johnson was in the thick of it. He shares his prayer life, God-given courage to attend a KKK meeting, the scars of brutality and abuse and prejudice while demonstrating how faith in God helped him overcome all and maintain a great witness for Jesus. God opens amazing doors when one is willing to follow! Young people also need to read this thrilling, well-written autobiography.

Life changing book
Being a white female in small town America where I rarely even see a person of color, I had no real understanding of the civil rights movement.The Man from Macedonia brought me understanding and heart break.Reading about Rev. Johnson's frightful experiences and his "fourth man in the fire" stirred up great faith in my heart. I'm not a big reader but I am so glad I purchased this book and had the chance to meet Rev. Johnson in it's pages.I deeply admire him and want to know more about men and women like him who changed our world during these events in history.I'm making sure my friends know about the book.I have a feeling this book is going to change my life.

Outstanding Story of Courage, Faith and Determination
This book offers a glimpse into what happens in an ordinary person's life when faced with extraordinary challenges.From his beginning as a sharecropper's son and a hand-to-mouth existence as a youngster growing up in North Carolina, Aaron Johnson follows God's calling to make a difference wherever he goes. At every turn, the story of Aaron Johnson resonates with authenticity and the desire to answer to the challenge of living with intention and purpose.Every once in a while we encounter a book that so grips us that we are changed for the better after having read it.This is such a book.It will give you intimate glimpses into the turbulent racial disturbances of the 1960's.It reveals how grass roots efforts by a few wise and disciplined people made history play out with a little more civility and reason than it otherwise would have.Aaron Johnson's work continues in his passionate and capable reshaping of the Department of Corrections in North Carolina.Multitudes have been benefited by his humble, yet skillful leading among those who would otherwise been the castaways of our society. Many who had lost hope in prisons and penal institutions have been transformed and given hope by this man's faith and his message. ... Read more