The perfect gift for a reading man like my brother, Rick

"Essential Classics" is a beautiful book, in every sense. The first thing one notices about this book is its exceptionally fine feel. This is a real book, a standard of the printer's art. The volume is published on heavy stock, acid-free paper and in a binding that will last forever, or at least until the end of the world. Long enough for our mortal purposes, I supose. The tomes on the shelves of the Great Library at Alexandria should have been as well crafted.

As to the astonishing quality of the book itself, there is no wonder. Upon opening the book, one sees that it is published by Les Belles Lettres, a Paris-based house with a reputation for printing the finest of books, upon the finest of materials, in the finest of traditions of workmanship.

The well-edited contents of "Essential Classics" are excerpts from classical Greek and Roman literature that have withstood the test of time. Much time. So kudos to the remarkable efforts of the editors, the team of Eric and Catherine Lapp, PhD classicists both of them.

This is a logically presented selection of some of the finest written material from the classical era that survives to this modern age. The contents cover 1,000 years from the 8th Century BC to the 2nd Century AD. These same, well-chosen words have been read by well-educated men and women for two millenia.

Most of the names in this book of excerpts are familiar to the modern reader, but some are better known than others. There are tales in this volume from Homer's Iliad and fables from none other than Aesop. There is philosophy from the likes of Sophocles and Plato, and history from none other than Herodotus (also known as "the father of history.") The book presents representative samples of other great thinkers such as Cicero, Horace, Livy and Ovid. The book provides a sampling of the great Julius Caesar (including his own explanation of the oft-cited yet oft-misunderstood crossing of the Rubicon). And then there is the incomparble Plutarch, discussing the nature of conquerors and conquest.

These are just a few examples of the rich lode of intellectual ore that you will find, there for the picking, in the more than 600 pages that make up this outstanding volume.

Thus "Essential Classics" should be an essential element of the library of anyone who wants to become familiar with the "essential knowledge" that is the hallmark of a person who is conversant with Western culture. Reading this impressive book is an education in itself. It is filled with sparkling gems, and the finest of polished stones.

The unfortunate reader who buys this anthology hoping to get a good overview or taste of the best of the literature of the Classical World is doomed to frustration and disgust. With this anthology a valuable opportunity for the general reader has been lost. The escape paragraph on the inside dust jacket says it all: "The Essential Classics is intended for professionals who appreciate culture, critical thinking and cutting wit."

Ah, PROFESSIONALS! It seems some professionals need something 2,500 years old to be translated into 17th and 18th century English, just to rope off their territory from the middlebrows. Well, they don't, but they don't know that they don't. Dudley Fitts, Richard Lattimore, William Arrowsmith et al set the standard in the 1950s and their example has clearly been ignored.

It will not do to cobble together a bunch of translations by Dryden or a Victorian stylist like Sir Somebody Something; they were of their time and belong to a volume that should have been more honest in its title or sub-title.

With a few exceptions, the editors have left most of the best thinking of the "Classical" period rendered into unintelligible if not boring antique English.

Whatever the explanation, be it the vagaries or exigencies of the publishing business, I knoweth not: all I can say is that a fine opportunity has been lost, and with it, any sales other than to libraries and the odd University Classics Department.