Don't Call It A Comeback

Interesting essay by Daniel Mendelsohn in The New Yorker about the latest translation of Herodotus. Sounds like this year's stocking stuffer.

I remember encountering Herodotus in college. One student asked the question we all wanted to know--"Are we responsible for all these names?" The professor nodded, sending a chill up our spines.

I also remember, like Mendelsohn does, how Thucydides was considered so much hipper. But who wouldn't love Herodotus, Father of History, master of the digression, who set the rules, and whose work influenced everything that came after?

So I'm glad to see he's in fashion again. I didn't know he ever out. (And extra points to Mendelsohn for not making cheap parallels with present-day politics. Few writers could resist.)