MixedThe Wall Street Journal\"This book, though, on her attraction to ancient Greek, the Greek alphabet, and then modern Greek and Greece and Greeks, is a darker, messier book [than her previous book]—beach reading for classicists and philhellenes, perhaps, but with something more serious at stake. Aiming at times for slapstick, Ms. Norris keeps uncovering veins of tragedy ... The book’s arrangement feels more like a labyrinth, the reader sometimes doubling back, sometimes arriving at an earlier point, sometimes unsure of where it’s all heading ... Sometimes Ms. Norris’s conversational ease risks being too breezy for the page ... The last visit to Greece described in the book seems to have taken place in 2009, when the new Acropolis Museum opened. That may explain why Greek to Me has little to say about the economic crisis or the refugee crisis that have rocked Greece in the past decade.\
James Romm, Trans. by Pamela Mensch
PositiveThe Wall Street JournalA handsome illustrated translation ... a beautiful object ... a perfect gift for the person in your life who mentions Plato’s cave or Zeno’s paradox, or wears a bow tie, or uses a fountain pen, or enjoys a bit of harmless armchair misanthropy ... The stylish introduction, by the classicist James Romm, is a joy to read, wearing its considerable learning lightly ... The plainest aspect of this edition is, curiously, the translation itself ... If Theophrastus’ humor strikes us as less sharp and satirical than it might be, it is perhaps because he never loses sight that he is talking about other human beings.
