When the New York Times interviewed E.L. Doctorow recently they asked
What’s the best book you’ve read recently? He had a long list. At the top, though, was your friend and mine, the father of history:
“Well, it could be Herodotus’ “The Histories” in the Landmark edition published by Pantheon. Herodotus is spectacular — part historian, part investigative reporter and inveterate storyteller. “
He went on to praise Tom Nagel’s Mind and Cosmos as “ an intense philosophical takedown of Neo-Darwinism and scientific materialism. It’s a brave contrarian book.”
Doctorow seems to like brave, contrarian books; I’d love to hear him apply those terms to Herodotus, who in addition to being the investigative reporter and inveterate story teller, may also be a contrarian or morew of a revisionist than we give him credit for.
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