Then & Now

Then & Now: The World's Center and the Soul's Demesne / 140-page paperback / 4.75" x 7.19" / ISBN 978-1-58988-101-3 Publication Date: June 2015 These two long essays make up a short book, one full of depth and knowledge, in which Eva Brann gets at the roots of our thinking—without tearing things apart. Then In the first, Brann parses out the schema and meaning of Herodotus’s The History (The Persian Wars). She writes that Herodotus worked by indirection. Giving a full account of the Persians and the peoples who constituted their empire—and whose empire encircled the Greeks (thus the “Greek center”)—Herodotus delineates the essential difference between the Barbarians and the Greeks. This difference Brann calls Athens’ “elusive essence,” its freedom contrasting with the slavery upon which the Persian empire depended. Now In the second essay, the author delves into what it means for a person to unite a disposition toward conservatism with a capacity to reiterate and rehearse events, s