All reviews copyright 1984-2008 Evelyn C. Leeper.
Mark Twain by Albert Bigelow Paine:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/20/2007]
MARK TWAIN by Albert Bigelow Paine (ISBN-10 0-877-54170-1, ISBN-13: 978-0-877-54170-7) was the first biography of Twain (published in 1912), and the most hagiographic. In his introduction to the three-volume 1980 Chelsea House edition I have, James Cox gives a brief overview of the major biographies of Twain and the approaches they have taken. Paine relied a lot on his own conversations with Twain (as well as those close to him), and people are notoriously unreliable in remembering their early years (as well as often desirous of portraying themselves well). And Twain, as a storyteller, was probably more prone to "elaborate" than most. So it is not surprising that Paine paints only a favorable picture of Twain--it is left for the later biographers to do more research and discover a more balanced picture. (Paine himself wrote an introduction in 1935 correcting some of the more noted errors.) But as long as that is kept in mind, Paine's work is a joy to read.
Other noted Twain biographers include Van Wyck Brooks (1925), Bernard DeVoto (1932), Dixon Wecter (1952), Justin Kaplan (1966), and Hamlin Hill (1973). The last three cover three different eras in Twain's life, so complement rather than directly dispute each other. (Works by Susy Clemens and William Dean Howells are too brief and anecdotal to be considered true biographies.) The Kaplan is on my to-read shelf, so expect comments on that eventually.
To order Mark Twain from amazon.com, click here.
SCREEN SIRENS SCREAM! by Paul Parla and Charles P. Mitchell:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/31/2006]
Tom Weaver has spent his time interviewing mostly people who had substantial careers in science fiction, fantasy, or horror (in such books as "Attack of the Monster Movie Makers", "They Fought in the Creature Features", "Interview with B Science Fiction and Horror Moviemakers", and "Science Fiction Stars and Horror Heroes"). In SCREEN SIRENS SCREAM! (ISBN 0-7864-0701-8), Paul Parla and Charles P. Mitchell have focused on a much narrower field--women who have appeared in one or two science fiction films, often as young girls, and then been for the most part forgotten as having a connection with that genre. They do include a few well-known actresses (such as Faith Domergue), but who remembers Ramsay Ames, Sandy Descher, Mimi Gibson, or Marilyn Harris (*). Many of these actresses have never been interviewed before, and their stories of being contract players or free-lance minor actresses provide an interesting balance to stories of grand careers and stardom.
Note: McFarland used to produce all their books in staid monotone cloth library bindings. Lately, they've taken to trying to appeal to the individual film fan by using illustrated board covers and re-issuing some of their works in trade paperback. This book has an eye-catching purple and green cover with a screaming woman whose face is covered in a regular pattern of pink dots. It is supposed to look like Pop Art, but it makes her look as though she has a case of measles.
(*) Amina Mansouri in THE MUMMY'S GHOST, catatonic girl in THEM!, Sandy in THE MONSTER THAT CHALLENGED THE WORLD, Maria in FRANKENSTEIN
To order Screen Sirens Scream! from amazon.com, click here.
BEL CANTO by Ann Patchett:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 09/12/2003]
Ann Patchett's BEL CANTO was chosen for our library book discussion group. It's not something I would normally read, and I can't really recommend it either. The basic plot is that a group of terrorists (or freedom fighters, depending on your perspective) storm a house in an unnamed South American country. (Unnamed, but it is clearly Peru.) They hope to take the President of the country hostage, but he isn't there, and they end up with dozens of hostages--far more than they expected or can deal with. The situation reminded me very much of Luis Bunuel's EXTERMINATING ANGEL, with the same sort of surreal atmosphere settling over the house, but it lacked the spark Bunuel had.
To order Bel Canto from amazon.com, click here.
THE LITTLE BOOK OF HINDU DEITIES by Sanjay Patel:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/16/2007]
THE LITTLE BOOK OF HINDU DEITIES by Sanjay Patel (ISBN-10 0-452-28775-8 ISBN-13 978-0-452-28775-4) is a quite charming introduction to Hinduism. Why charming? Because the illustrations (also done by Sanjay Patel) are delightful; they were inspired, as he says, by Sanrio's "Hello Kitty" designs. [See examples of the illustrations at http://tinyurl.com/2xcauz and http://tinyurl.com/2e2jzh. -mrl] The book covers the Hindu Trinity, the manifestations of Shiva, the Mother Goddess, the Ten Avatars of Vishnu, as well as the Hindu epics, the demigods, the nine planets, the animal gods, and the creation story. My only complaint is that Patel is often a bit too cutesy for his own good. For example, of Shiva and his family he writes, "The constant companion and vehicle of Lord Shiva and his family is the snow-white bull known as Nandi, on whom, it is thought, only those who have conquered their desires through yoga are fit to ride. Who needs a dog as a companion when you can ride a bull? That is, if you've done your yoga." I suppose this is because the book is somewhat aimed at a young adult audience, although the vocabulary used would put it at the upper end of that range. Still, for adults who have had no real exposure to the basic information about Hindu theology, this is a good introduction.
To order The Little Book of Hindu Deities from amazon.com, click here.
TRUTH, KNOWLEDGE, OR JUST PLAIN BULL: HOW TO TELL THE DIFFERENCE by Bernard M. Patten:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/07/2006]
TRUTH, KNOWLEDGE, OR JUST PLAIN BULL: HOW TO TELL THE DIFFERENCE (ISBN 1-59102-246-0) deals with logical fallacies, groupthink, and other obstacles to clear thinking. The problem is that there have been a lot of books covering this ground already, and this does not add anything new (except adding more recent examples, I suppose). And although I am probably somewhat to the left of center politically, I found the extreme left-wing bias in Patten's writing and examples to be very annoying. If he is trying to convince a wide audience, he probably should have avoided such obvious political bias.
To order Truth, Knowledge, or Just Plain Bull from amazon.com, click here.
A MATHEMATICIAN PLAYS THE STOCK MARKET by John Allen Paulos:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/24/2004]
John Allen Paulos wrote A MATHEMATICIAN PLAYS THE STOCK MARKET (ISBN 0-465-05481-1) after he lost a lot of money (he never says exactly how much) on WorldCom stock. Paulos talks about various "philosophies" about how the stock market works, and what strategies (if any) would be used in support of the various philosophies. These strategies are based on statistics and probability, so expect equations and calculations. His overall conclusion, not surprisingly, is that one's plans should always provide insurance against losing more than one can afford to. This struck me as a good explanation of a lot of the basic workings of stocks and the stock market, but then, I was a math major.
To order A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market from amazon.com, click here.
BOOK LUST by Nancy Pearl:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/27/2004]
For people looking for where to start on a particular topic or in a particular genre, Nancy Pearl's BOOK LUST is probably a useful resource. (Of course, these days, people are more likely to google for something like this.) Pearl's book is a list of categories and topics, each with a brief starter bibliography. For example, for science fiction, she recommends (in this order) Mary Doria Russell's THE SPARROW, Orson Scott Card's ENDER'S GAME, Isaac Asimov's "Foundation" series (particularly the first book), Frederik Pohl's GATEWAY, Clifford Simak's works (particularly SHAKESPEARE'S PLANET, WAY STATION, CITY, and DESTINY DOLL), Sir Arthur C. Clarke's CHILDHOOD'S END, Joe Haldeman's THE FOREVER WAR, Roger Zelazny's NINE PRINCES IN AMBER, Frank Herbert's "Dune" series (though she didn't say how many of them), and Ursula K. LeGuin's THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS and THE DISPOSSESSED.
Pearl gives separate lists for fantasy and horror, but she also has a separate cyberpunk list as well: William Gibson's NEUROMANCER; Neal Stephenson's SNOW CRASH and CRYPTONOMICON; Eric S Nylund's SIGNAL TO NOISE; Pat Cadigan's TEA FROM AN EMPTY CUP and DERVISH IS DIGITAL; Rudy Rucker's SOFTWARE and WETWARE; John Brunner's THE SHOCKWAVE RIDER; Bruce Sterling's ZEITGEIST, HEAVY WEATHER, and HOLY FIRE; William Gibson's PATTERN RECOGNITION; and the anthology HACKERS (edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois).
To order Book Lust from amazon.com, click here.
THE RAPHAEL AFFAIR by Ian Pears:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/27/2004]
Ian Pears's THE RAPHAEL AFFAIR is a better mystery, but it definitely requires at least some knowledge of art to appreciate it. It (and his other art mysteries) are a lot shorter than his book AN INSTANCE OF THE FINGERPOST, so they are good books to start with to get an idea of his style.
To order The Raphael Affair from amazon.com, click here.
WHOSE BIBLE IS IT? by Jaroslav Pelikan:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 11/25/2005]
WHOSE BIBLE IS IT? by Jaroslav Pelikan (ISBN 0-670-03385-5) is a look at the history of the Bible, its translations, and the attitudes of various religions towards it. One interesting point that Pelikan makes is that the Catholic Church insisted for centuries that the Bible should not be translated into the vernacular, but the Latin Vulgate they supported was itself a translation into the vernacular from the Greek Septuagint (as well as from Hebrew and Aramaic sources). Unfortunately, this book lacks a very important feature: an index. So when I wanted to see how the Douai-Rheims translation came about, or what the Latin version might be that Helene Hanff referred so negatively to as "black Anglican Bible," I was out of luck.
To order Whose Bible Is It? from amazon.com, click here.
THE REMARKABLE MILLARD FILLMORE by George Pendle:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/25/2008]
I had heard good things about THE REMARKABLE MILLARD FILLMORE by George Pendle (ISBN-13 978-0-307-33962-1, ISBN-10 0-307-33962-9). It was supposedly very funny, but it just fell flat with me. It's possible that "For the first ten years of his life, Fillmore did not attend school, education not being encouraged by his parents, who, due to a misunderstanding, believed it to be a cause of goiter" might seem humorous to some, but I am not one of them. And while there is an index, it is largely fictitious. For example, one entry is "Hun: Attila the, 76-78; unless you've got buns, 4". Needless to say, pages 76-78 and 4 have no such references. The only real truth in the book is in the notes at the end, explaining how the bare facts of the narrative, stripped of their silliness, are true. The description on the back says "Humor", but the Library of Congress classification is American history. I suppose it is history, in some sense, but I doubt I would shelve it there--or anywhere else in my collection.
To order The Remarkable Millard Fillmore from amazon.com, click here.
STRANGE ANGEL: THE OTHERWORLDLY LIFE OF ROCKET SCIENTIST JOHN WHITESIDE PARSONS by George Pendle:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 09/08/2006]
STRANGE ANGEL: THE OTHERWORLDLY LIFE OF ROCKET SCIENTIST JOHN WHITESIDE PARSONS by George Pendle (ISBN 0-15-100997-X) is a biography of the man who developed solid rocket fuel, then got involved in Aleister Crowley's religious cult, and eventually blew himself up under somewhat suspicious circumstances. Along the way he was heavily involved in science fiction fandom and LASFL/LASFS. In fact, he seems to have taken some ideas for rockets from early Jack Williamson stories, introduced L. Ron Hubbard to Aleister Crowley's cult (gee, I wonder what effect that had :-) ), and known most of the major science fiction authors of that time. Interestingly, of all the authors he knew, it is one of the oldest who is still around to provide information to Pendle: Jack Williamson (born 1908). Forrest J. Ackerman (born 1916) and Ray Bradbury (born 1920) are also still with us, but so many other authors died much younger: Asimov (1920-1992), L. Sprague de Camp (1907-2000), Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988), L. Ron Hubbard (1911-1986), Willy Ley (1906-1969), and Alva Rogers (1923-1982).
To order Strange Amgel from amazon.com, click here.
PHYSICS FOR ENTERTAINMENT by Yakov Perelman:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/18/2008]
PHYSICS FOR ENTERTAINMENT by Yakov Perelman (ISBN-13 978-1-4013-0921-3, ISBN-10 1-4013-0921-3) is a reprint of the 1936 edition of a book originally written in 1925 in Russia. (Perelman died in the Siege of Leningrad in 1942.) It consists of short articles about various aspects of physics, often tied in to science fiction. For example, Perelman discusses why Wells's Invisible Man would be blind, and why the occupants of Verne's space capsule would have problems cooking dinner. Others are straightforward looks at things like neat tricks with refraction, and why various "perpetual motion" machines aren't. This would be a great gift for a science-minded teenager. (It is also kind of cool-looking in a retro sort of way, because it uses the same plates as the 1975 Mir (Moscow) edition.)
To order Physics for Entertainment from amazon.com, click here.
THE CLUB DUMAS by Arturo Perez-Reverte:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/17/2003]
I re-read THE CLUB DUMAS by Arturo Perez-Reverte for our library discussion group. Much as I like the film THE NINTH GATE, it's still annoying in that the film drops the entire Dumas plot and pumps up the other sub-plot and makes it much more overt.
To order The Club Dumas from amazon.com, click here.
ROUTE 66 A.D. by Tony Perrottet:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/28/2003]
I want to mention another book I found at the library, Tony Perrottet's ROUTE 66 A.D. Perrottet retraced the steps of the Roman tourists of two thousand years ago around the Mediterranean, interspersing descriptions of their travel conditions and experiences with his own. As a way to see the area it is certainly interesting, though I wouldn't recommend it to someone making it their only venture to that region, since he skips anything less than two thousand years old--which includes all of Istanbul. (Well, that's not quite true. He does visit King Tut's tomb, which while over two thousand years old, was unknown to the Roman tourists.) It's certainly an interesting (and accidental) companion piece to Edward Gibbon's DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE, the first third of which I hope to finish this week.
To order Route 66 A.D. from amazon.com, click here.
THOU SHALT NOT KILL: BIBLICAL MYSTERY STORIES edited by Anne Perry:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/14/2006]
THOU SHALT NOT KILL: BIBLICAL MYSTERY STORIES edited by Anne Perry (ISBN 0-786-71575-8) is an anthology of "Biblical mysteries"--some set in Biblical times, some in modern times but paralleling Biblical themes, and some with even more tenuous Biblical connections. It is a mixed bag, with a couple of good stories, but also several predictable ones. The best if the first (as is usually the case): Simon Brett's "Cain Was Innocent", which is set neither in Biblical times nor the present. There is Gillian Linscott's "A Blessing of Frogs", in which the plague in Egypt helps solve a murder. And there are a Sister Fidelma story from Peter Tremayne and a Father Dowling story from Ralph McInerny, which will certainly interest fans of those series. I'm not sure I can recommend buying the trade paperback new, but it is certainly worth reading.
To order Thou Shalt Not Kill from amazon.com, click here.
UNUSUALLY STUPID AMERICANS by Kathryn and Ross Petras:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/06/2004]
Kathryn and Ross Petras's UNUSUALLY STUPID AMERICANS (ISBN 0-8129- 7082-9) is a collection of the sorts of stories one finds these days at the Obscure News Store (http://obscurestore.com). Categories in the book include "How to Lose an Election" (e.g., "Urinate in a voter's yard"), "Top Food-Related Crimes" (e.g., "Selling Counterfeit Veal"), "Heart-Warming Examples of the IRS in Action" (e.g., "IRS Tries to Dig Up Dead Taxpayer's Body"), and many others. I do dispute one entry though: the Petrases find the New Mexico Official State Motto ("Red or green?") stupid--I find it charming.
To order Unusually Stupid Americans from amazon.com, click here.
SECOND GLANCE by Jodi Picoult:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/15/2008]
The newly formed afternoon discussion group at the library chose SECOND GLANCE by Jodi Picoult (ISBN-13 978-0-743-45451-3, ISBN-10 0-743-45451-0) for February. This is apparently popular with discussion groups, since the trade paperback has thirteen "questions and topics for discussion" at the back. And for me, the assumptions behind these were far more interesting and thought-provoking that the book itself. WARNING--spoilers ahead.
The first question says, in part, "In what ways does this title help us to understand that this book is not only about revisiting the past, but also exploring what we thought we knew, what we may have been mistaken about, and how things look different in hindsight?" While it is true that one might claim certain themes are obvious in a book, this seems to be a bit too specific. It's one thing to ask how a book is about perceptions, but this is really leading the witness.
"Ethan [a nine-year-old child in the book] struggles with the painful knowledge that he will probably die young. But despite this fact, Ethan seems to be very well adjusted--he has a sense of wisdom that certainly transcends his age." Yes, Ethan is a really remarkable kid--but he is not real. He is a character that Picoult wrote that way, so the real discussion point to me is whether Ethan seems believable as a character. (I am reminded of Robert A. Heinlein's STARSHIP TROOPERS. The society in that novel has flogging for traffic offenses and a variety of other societal changes. When one character asks another whether these are a good idea, the second says, well of course--the society works well, doesn't it? Well, yes, but that is because Heinlein wrote it that way.)
"Were you surprised to find this [the actual existence of the Vermont eugenics project] out? As you were reading the book, did you ever suspect that this was, indeed a chapter in Vermont's history? How does it change your view of this story to know that thirty-three states actually enacted sterilization laws?" This to me is the key question: it tells me who the target audience is (and is not). Clearly, the phrasing indicates that it is assumed that the reader did not know about the Vermont eugenics project or the sterilization laws, and probably thought Picoult made it up until they read the author's note at the end.
To order Second Glance from amazon.com, click here.
PESACH FOR THE REST OF US: MAKING THE PASSOVER SEDER YOUR OWN by Marge Piercy:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/20/2007]
PESACH FOR THE REST OF US: MAKING THE PASSOVER SEDER YOUR OWN by Marge Piercy (ISBN-10 0-805-24242-2, ISBN-13 978-0-805-24242-3) is a bit too radical for me. Piercy and her family and friends do a lot to make the Seder relevant: putting an orange on the Seder plate to represent women, emphasizing all the springtime/fertility images, changing the Four Questions to ones they find more relevant, and so on. If she were more aware of the basics, I might be more accepting of her changes, but she does not seem to be. For example, she discusses why we bless the wine for the Seder, and claims we don't bless wine any other time. This is just flat-out wrong. The observant bless it whenever they drink it; even the less observant bless it for Kiddush on Friday night. And she pads the book out with recipes, including some that are not even kosher! Maybe I am just too much of a traditionalist, but I found this too unstructured, too "New-Agey/pagan symbolism/do-your-own-thing" to be worthwhile.
To order Pesach for the Rest of Us from amazon.com, click here.
A JEW AMONG EVANGELICALS by Mark I. Pinsky:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/13/2007]
A JEW AMONG EVANGELICALS by Mark I. Pinsky (ISBN-10 0-664-23012-1, ISBN-13 978-0*664*23012-1) is more about evangelicals and their various sub-groups than about being a Jew among them. It's worth reading, but the title is a bit misleading.
To order A Jew among Evangelicals from amazon.com, click here.
THE CASE OF THE PATIENT'S EYES by David Pirie:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 10/21/2005]
THE CASE OF THE PATIENT'S EYES (ISBN 0-312-29095-0) by David Pirie is yet another Sherlockian book, but one step removed. The main character is Arthur Conan Doyle, with Dr. Joseph Bell as the major second character. It takes place in the late 1870s, and purports to explain how Doyle learned detection from Bell, and also where he got some of his stories. That is, in this novel Doyle gets a patient who has been invited to a Senor Garcia's house for dinner, but then Garcia disappears, or he has another patient being followed by a cyclist. This means that Pirie has a lot of his work already done for him, and also that the reader keeps thinking, "I've read this before." It is true that some of details and explanations are changed from the Holmes stories, but this makes it seem more like an annotation of alternate explanations, instead of an original novel, and also more like a sequence of incidents rather than a single story. It is interesting, but not great.
To order The Case of the Patient's Eyes from amazon.com, click here.
THE EXPERIENCES OF LOVEDAY BROOKE by Catherine Louisa Pirkis:
Dover Books has been publishing inexpensive, well-bound trade paperbacks of classic mysteries from the 1880-1950 range (give or take). Most are English, that being the "Golden Age" of English detective stories. However, it turns out that pretty much all of the ones I bought have also gone out of print, even from Dover, which keeps a lot of older works in print. (For example, they have kept Olaf Stapledon's four major novels in print for at least thirty years now.) Luckily, most of these mysteries are available relatively cheaply as used books.
THE EXPERIENCES OF LOVEDAY BROOKE by Catherine Louisa Pirkis is one of the more peculiar. It is also one of the more difficult to shelve, being 6-1/8" by 9-1/4", rather than the standard 5- 3/8"x8". This is because, like all the Dover mysteries, it is a reproduction of the original publication, including illustrations, and since that was in a large-format magazine, making it any smaller would make the print unreadable. Written in 1893, it is one of the earliest series to feature a woman detective. While a bit limited by what a lady could do in those days, that is also part of its appeal. (And, yes, Loveday Brooke is a lady, not just a woman.) Unfortunately, not only is this now out of print, it is going for inflated prices as a used book ($27 and up).
To order The Experiences of Loveday Brooke from amazon.com, click here.
NATURAL HISTORY by Pliny:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/29/2003]
A few months ago, I claimed, "Plutarch ... is not chock-a-block with humor." Some people claimed that he did have humorous passages, but I had missed them. However, Pliny the Elder *is* definitely full of humor, albeit unintentional. Like Herodotus, Pliny seems to have believed everything he heard--or at least he included it in his "Natural History".
(I'm doing my readings from Penguin's NATURAL HISTORY: A SELECTION, translated by John F. Healy. The blurb describes the full work by saying, "It certainly includes more than 20,000 facts derived from over 2,000 earlier texts, which makes it *the* major source for ancient beliefs about every form of useful knowledge....")
Some of what Pliny says is certainly true. And some of what he says may be true; for example, it may be true that babies don't smile until they are forty days old (VII:2). However, he also claims that Man has to be taught how to walk and how to eat (VII:4). I'm skeptical of the former, and flat-out disbelieve the latter. He also claims "Man alone of all living creatures has been given grief" and that only Man fights with his own kind (VII:5). The latter is known to be false (and probably was then as well). The former is typical anthropocentrism--Pliny has no real evidence of this, but it *seems* true to him.
Sometimes he is clear that he is just reporting other people's claims. For example, he says, "Megasthenes records that on Mount Nulus there are men with their feet reversed and with eight toes on each foot.... Ctesias writes that in a certain Indian tribe women bear children only once in their lifetime...." (VII:22). (Apparently he doesn't note that Ctesias's observation doesn't make sense arithmetically.) But often he doesn't give an attribution at all.
I can remember my mother saying that if you measure a child's height on their third birthday, their adult height will be twice this. I don't think she read Pliny, but that's what he says (VII:73).
This is all a bit unfair to Pliny, who did the best he could with the science (and reportage) of his time. And he was certainly an early martyr to science--he died overcome by fumes when he tried to get too close to Vesuvius to report on its eruption in 79 C.E.
To order Pliny's Natural History: A Selection from amazon.com, click here.
PLUTARCH'S LIVES: FALL OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC by Plutarch:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 11/28/2003]
I read Plutarch's FALL OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC, but as I noted in my article on acquisitions, I have just gotten the complete Plutarch, with the parallelisms intact, so I will end up re-reading all these at some point. Well, they are some of the most interesting: Pompey, Crassus (and the Servile Wars), Julius Caesar, and so on. It will be interesting to see to whom he compares them.
To order Plutarch's Lives: Fall of the Roman Republic from amazon.com, click here.
PLUTARCH'S LIVES: THE RISE AND THE FALL OF ATHENS by Plutarch:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/31/2003]
Plutarch, on the other hand, is not chock-a-block with humor. I'm currently reading the Penguin edition subtitled "The Rise and Fall of Athens," but have gotten only as far as Theseus, Solon, and Themistocles. The first two seem to be based more on legend than on history, but the last moves more into history. Themistocles also has the distinction of being quoted in LAWRENCE OF ARABIA: "I cannot fiddle but I can make a great state of a small city." Bartlett renders the quote as "Tuning the lyre and handling the harp are no accomplishments of mine, but rather taking in hand a city that was small and making it glorious and great." This seems closer to what Plutrach paraphrases, but not as "snappy."
To order Plutarch's Lives: The Rise and Fall of Athens from amazon.com, click here.