Moses Finley (1912-1986) was one of the most widely read scholarly historians and journalists of his age, having grown famous with The World of Odysseus; and he exercised a transformative influence on the study of the history of Greek and Roman antiquity. In this centenary volume distinguished ancient historians and Americanists analyse Finley’s political and intellectual evolution, and attempt to understand the paradoxes of the young leftist and victim of McCarthyism whose work owes more to Weber than to Marx and of the young Jewish scholar (Moses Finkelstein) who distanced himself from Jewishness.
W.V. Harris is Director of the Center for the Ancient Mediterranean at Columbia University. He has written widely about the social, psychological, and economic history of the Graeco-Roman world, and about Roman imperialism. In 2011 he published Rome's Imperial Economy.
Contributors: Paul Cartledge, W.V. Harris, Thai Jones, Alice Kessler-Harris, Richard P. Saller, Ellen Schrecker, Seth R. Schwartz, Daniel Tompkins.
Essential reading for all graduate students and teachers of ancient history, and important too for students of 1930s, 40s and 50s America and of the history of the Jews in America.