The Greek War of Independence

By Peter H. Paroulakis

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• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0959089411
• ISBN13: 9780959089417
• Release Date: October 2000
• Publisher: Hellenic International Press
• Length: 174 Pages
• Weight: 1.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 8.1" x 10.9"

Customer Reviews

Putting Faces to the Names

Having read Dakin,it was a delight to find the wonderful pictures in this book.The script is quite simplistic but the illustrations add so much that reading endless pages do not.Worth buying just for the illustrations !

Nice graphics; one-dimentional text

Well I liked this book for the graphics. The text was simplistic, but this is a good coffeehouse book, not a comprehensive book on history, though it does give a balanced view of Russian and British military help, which is often ignored. Overall a pretty good book.

Gorgeous graphics

This is a book for the coffee table and it makes no pretense to being scholarly or historical-analytic, even though the text is not at all bad.What is really exciting about this publication is that it brings together many of the classical paintings that depict various scenes - battles, retreats, confrontations - that took place during Greece's struggle for independence from the Ottoman Empire. There are also some fine portraits of many important military figures, politicians, and philhellenes. Most of the original paintings can be seen in Athens at the National Art Museum, the National Historical Museum, or the Benaki Museum. For at least one, though, you will have to go to Paris.While I suppose art critics and historians would consider most of these paintings to be of only limited artistic merit, I personally find them - well, most of them - gorgeous. Some are very touching: sad reminders of how the Greeks lived under the Turkish yoke. In one a young boy is being taken from his parents by a government official in charge of the infamous "boy tax." In another an Orthodox priest is teaching a group of youngsters in one of the "secret schools" while an armed guard watches over them. The paintings that show church hierarchs in ceremonial robes are especially beautiful and those depicting naval battles are glorious.This book could be recommended to anyone who enjoys looking at beautiful things and in particular to those who also have an interest in the history of modern Greece.

A hope for those who had none

Confessing an unchallenged verbosity, "The Greek War of Independence" rewards the young historians with several artifices necessary in understanding the historic sensibilities of the Balkan nations. Proving honesty and discernment, the author assails in vouchsafing a deserving credit upon the famous Greeks responsible for doing their best in keeping the Islamic forced conversion away from Eastern Europe as much as possible. Healing and yet opening long forgotten wounds of history, the book is a reminder about the suffering of several nations, enslaved for centuries under the Ottoman yoke.