Across the pages of THE RISE OF ATHENS: The Story of the World’s Greatest Civilization, author Anthony Everitt presents a magisterial account of how a tiny city-state in ancient Greece became history’s most influential civilization and how modern culture is still profoundly impacted by the Athenians to this day. Mr. Everitt says,“I wanted to tell the story of the western world’s first great democratic experiment. In other words, the story of ancient Athens. But was the experiment a success? Yes and no. It produced a fine crop of geniuses, sure, but after every triumph a disaster followed. Democracy is indeed…
