Robert Kanigel

In the early 1930s, Milman Parry introduced the revolutionary hypothesis that the Iliad and the Odyssey were not "written" as we understand it, but derived from an oral tradition going back centuries; this idea's effects are still felt in contemporary scholarship, but Parry himself has mostly disappeared from view. Now, Robert Kanigel gives us a full and vivid account of his life, explores the mystery surrounding Parry's death at 33, and describes...

A sparkling history of the remarkable Great Blasket Island--an Irish outpost nearly untouched by time in the first half of the 20h century--its most noteworthy citizens, and the adventurous men and women who visited it and were inspired by it.