The Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer brings to life the most intriguing woman in the history of the world: Cleopatra, the last queen of Egypt. Her palace shimmered with onyx, garnets, and gold, but was richer still in political and sexual intrigue. Above all else, Cleopatra was a shrewd strategist and an ingenious negotiator. Though her life spanned fewer than forty years, it reshaped the contours of the ancient world. She was married twice, each time to a brother. She waged a brutal civil war against the first when both were teenagers. She poisoned the second. Ultimately she dispensed with an ambitious sister as well; incest and assassination were family specialties. Cleopatra appears to have had sex with only two men. They happen, however, to have been Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, among the most prominent Romans of the day. Both were married to other women. Cleopatra had a child with Caesar and -- after his murder -- three more with his protégé. Already she was the wealthiest ruler in the Mediterranean; the relationship with Antony confirmed her status as the most influential woman of the age. The two would together attempt to forge a new empire, in an alliance that spelled their ends. Cleopatra has lodged herself in our imaginations ever since. Famous long before she was notorious, Cleopatra has gone down in history for all the wrong reasons. Shakespeare and Shaw put words in her mouth. Michelangelo, Tiepolo, and Elizabeth Taylor put a face to her name. Along the way, Cleopatra's supple personality and the drama of her circumstances have been lost. In a masterly return to the classical sources, Stacy Schiff here boldly separates fact from fiction to rescue the magnetic queen whose death ushered in a new world order. Rich in detail, epic in scope, Schiff 's is a luminous, deeply original reconstruction of a dazzling life.

The definitive story of the seven Cleopatras, the powerful goddess-queens of ancient Egypt One of history’s most iconic figures, Cleopatra is rightly remembered as a clever and charismatic ruler. But few today realize that she was the last in a long line of Egyptian queens who bore that name. In The Cleopatras, historian Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones tells the dramatic story of these seven incomparable women, vividly recapturing the lost world of Hellenistic Egypt and tracing the kingdom’s final centuries before its fall to Rome. The Cleopatras were Greek-speaking descendants of Ptolemy, the general who conquered Egypt alongside Alexander the Great. They were closely related as mothers, daughters, sisters, half-sisters, and nieces. Each wielded absolute power, easily overshadowing their husbands or sons, and all proved to be shrewd and capable leaders. Styling themselves as goddess-queens, the Cleopatras ruled through the canny deployment of arcane rituals, opulent spectacles, and unparalleled wealth. They navigated political turmoil and court intrigues, led armies into battle and commanded fleets of ships, and ruthlessly dispatched their dynastic rivals. The Cleopatras is a fascinating and richly textured biography of seven extraordinary women, restoring these queens to their deserved place among history’s greatest rulers.

Although there are many books written about the most famous Cleopatra, this is the only study in English devoted to her less well-known but equally illustrious namesakes. Cleopatras traces the turbulent lives and careers of these historically important women, examining in particular the earlier Macedonian and Ptolemaic Cleopatras, and the impact of their dynastic marriages on the history of the Hellenistic world. John Whitehorne also evaluates current views of Cleopatra VII's dramatic suicide, and considers the evolving political significance of royal women in the last three centuries BC. Clearly and engagingly written, Cleopatras reveals the true significance to the ruling dynasties of the 34 known Cleopatras who were not Cleopatra the Great, and illuminates some fascinating but little-known aspects of ancient Greek and Egyptian history along the way.

Page-turning historical fiction that reimagines the beginnings of Cleopatra's epic saga through the eyes of her younger sister. Before Caesar and the carpet, before Antony and Actium, before Octavian and the asp, there was Arsinoe. Abandoned by her beloved Cleopatra and an indifferent father, young Arsinoe must fight for her survival in the bloodthirsty royal court when her half-sister Berenice seizes Egypt's throne. Even as the quick-witted girl wins Berenice's favor, a new specter haunts her days-dark dreams that have a habit of coming true. To survive, she escapes the palace for the war-torn streets of Alexandria. Meanwhile, Berenice confronts her own demons as she fights to maintain power. When their deposed father Ptolemy marches on the city with a Roman army, both daughters must decide where their allegiances truly lie, and Arsinoe grapples with the truth, that the only way to survive her dynasty is to rule it.

Nick Lantz explores the transformative power of tragic and miraculous experiences, through these poems that illuminate near misses of tragedy and transcendence. His gaze is both roving and microscopic the Challenger explosion, Bigfoot, a love letter written from inside a missile silo, a mother naming and re-naming a family s short-lived pets, and a plea for post-9/11 redemption. Lantz never lets his subjects or his readers off the hook, plunging head first into worlds that are both eccentric and familiar, alarming and hopeful. Finalist, Foreword Magazine s Poetry Book of the Year"

Cleopatra's Nose is an exuberant gathering of essays and profiles representing twenty years of Judith Thurman's celebrated writing, particularly her fascination with human vanity, femininity, and "women's work"—from haute couture to literature to commanding empires. The subjects are iconic (Jackie, the Brontës, Toni Morrison, Anne Frank) and multifarious (tofu and performance art, pornography and platform shoes, kimonos and bulimia); all inspire dazzling displays of craft, wit, penetration, and intelligence. Here we find explorations of voracity: hunger for sex, food, experience, and transcendence; see how writers from Flaubert to Nadine Gordimer have engaged with history; meet eminent Victorians and the greats of fashion. Whether reporting on hairstyles, strolling the halls of power, or deftly unpacking novels and their writers, Thurman never fails to provoke, inspire, captivate, and enlighten. Cleopatra's Nose is an embarrassment of riches from one of our great literary journalists.

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