Customer Reviews

Black Sea

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Neal Ascherson's book is a labor of love, not of intellect, and as such it deserves respect. On the back cover of the book, it is said that he argues that "What makes the Black Sea Cultures distinctive is the way their component parts have come together over the millenia to shape unique communities, languages, religions, and trade". If this is the central tenet of Mr. Ascherson's book, he fails miserably. The book neglects such important areas as Constanta while drifting aimlessly through Vilnius, Scotland, Warsaw, and other places. Much of the book, I would say around 45 out of 276 pages, is devoted to the time Adam Mickiewicz, who spent time in Odessa and the surrounding areas. This is fine, if one is interested in the lives of Polish poets, but in the context of a Black Sea culture, the presentation of its link is so very tentative that it leaves the reader feeling like he might as well be reading about Japanese haiku. If there was a point to the case of Adam Mickiewicz, it is lost in the sheer size of its narrative.

There are very interesting snippets within the book, some of which are well drawn out, as in the cases of Trabzon and the Lazi, while others are barely touched on, as in the case of a Russian archaeologist sadly in love with a long dead Sarmatian princess and the recent events in Abkhazia. These relevant and interesting asides do not however, deviate from the main ideapresented by Mr. Ascherson himself, namely, that there is little worth mentioning in the Black Sea area than the pontic Greeks. Sadly, Mr. Ascherson works against his own thesis.

If it were not for the genuine passion that Mr. Ascherson writes with, this book would be a waste of time. As it stands, its inept intellectual foundations are worth reading simply for the joy with which they are presented.

The style is journalistic which makes it easy and enjoyable to read. The author can tell a story convincingly and he tells many. The subject matter is extremely exotic for an American reader. I have no way to know how reliable this author is as a historian. I am always suspicious of first-person journalistic history. Unlike other readers, I enjoyed the bits about Poland. But I think he is at his best in the lengthy ancient history parts. The best thing I can say about this book is it left me wanting to learn more.

This is a bold and imaginative look at an area critical to the development of Western culture.Ascherson takes us on a remarkable tour through geography and history, and one comes away with much of the excitement of a real traveller. If the book stumbles on occasion I think it should be forgiven given the complexities that the author is willing to address (and the remarkably few stumbles that he has made. I particularly enjoyed Ascherson taking us more or less up to the present, as the spectre of modern environmental collapse joins the never-ending wars whose origins become more understandable after one has read this book. I wish it were longer, I wish there were more obvious references to take us further once we were done, but this is a real gem even if you never get east of Long Island Sound.

I have read many travelogues, for example ones by authors such as Lawrence Durrell, Rebecca West, and Jan Morris. I found this book to be of similar high quality. The author gives information in an enjoyable format that relates to his own personal travel in the region. His anecdotes on the retreat of the White Russian army from Novorossisk are interesting. The book gave me new information for an area that is often left out of other histories I have read about Byzantium and Eastern Europe. Information about the lucrative Venetian slave trade operating out of Tana was new to me and has never been mentioned in any other book about Venice or Byzantium that I have read. The story of the Pontine Greeks living in Trebizond and their "Katastrofe" exodus from there filled in gaps of knowledge for me. His discussion of Catherine the Great and her use of Cossacks and Jews to settle and develop the Don River region is fascinating. The book does dwell quite a bit on Polish involvement in Odessa, but his digression on the existence of a Polish and Lithuanian federation that stretched from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea was an esoteric and curious pleasure for me to read. I am passing the book along to several of my friends.

Ascherson's style is constantly engaging and provocative. He asks probing questions -- e.g. not only the genetic/ethnic question "who are these people?" but the often ignored further question, "who do these people think they are?". The answers diverge more often than one would expect. His coverage and command of 3000 years of jumbled ethnicities is impressive. My one complaint lies in his treatment of the point that forms his subtitle: that the Black Sea area is the "birthplace of civilization and barbarism". The essential point here is that one cannot participate in both "civilization" and "barbarism" at once. The support for this claim is not sufficient, and indeed seems to run counter to the theme of intermixture that animates the rest of the book. Nonetheless, the book is fantastic and well worth the read. We are deeply in Ascherson's debt for this wonderful work.

Read as preparation for cruise of Black Sea and found the book highly relevant and a good read. Thought clarity and usefulness would have been tremendously enhanced if Ascherson had included maps for each chapter showing locations being discussed as well as current and ancient place names.

Neal Ascherson really touched the heart of the matter. And I can justify, for I grew up on the shores of the Black Sea and like most of the Odessa boys dreamt of becoming a ship captain. This perceptive Englishman managed to pick up some really subtle and non-evident things and described them with sense and stile. Sometimes, though the narrative seems uneven and dreamy, but that's because I red it not on the seashore but in the midst of urgent things. I just couldn't put it down. The book about the sea, the people and the history.

The part about Georgia is amazingly distorted.The author writes that in Sokhumi he saw many monuments to Armenian and Abkhazian writers disfigured by the Georgians. There was not a single monument to any armenian in Abkhazeti.First learn the Georgian language,then write about Georgia.An absolutely disgusting book not worth reading.

Mr Acherson did an excellent job.He has researched the subject extensively and gave accounts of the key factors that shaped the region.The continuous coming and going of principal peoples around the region was expertly chronicled. Recent events which shaped the demographics of the area were described in great detail. The Soviet era could have been described in more detail, as Stalin's ethnic cleansing/repopulation was a major event in determining todays situation. Overall, however, a job well done.

What's up with all this discussion on Poland? Reading "Black Sea," one notices after a while that they're no longer reading about the Black Sea at all. Then you look in the index and see that more space is devoted to Poland than virtually any other single subject. Then you look in the author's cv and see that he's written extensively on Poland. If I'd wanted to read about Poland, I would have bought "Poland." (Otherwise, extraordinarily good.)