Nicholas Nicastro (born 1963) is an American fiction and science writer, filmmaker, and film critic. His 2008 biography of Eratosthenes attracted scholarly attention.
Nicastro taught anthropology, psychology and writing at Cornell University and Hobart and William Smith Colleges. While active in research he published scholarly papers in Journal of Comparative Psychology, Evolutionary Anthropology, Behavioral & Brain Sciences, and American Journal of Archaeology.[5] In 2005, he left academia to pursue writing full-time.
Writings, reception, and awards
Nicastro's writings include short fiction, travel and science articles in such publications as The New York Times, The New York Observer, Film Comment, and the International Herald Tribune. In 1996, he wrote and directed the documentary video Science or Sacrilege: Native Americans, Archaeology & the Law, an examination of the conflict between scientists and native people for control of ancient remains.[6] The video was honored by the American Anthropological Association, the Northwest Anthropological Conference, and the American Society for Ethnohistory, and is currently distributed by Berkeley Media LLC. It is often shown in college courses on this subject.[citation needed]
Nicastro wrote a regular film review column for The New York Observer from 1988 to 1990. From 2006 to 2015, Nicastro served as film critic for Tompkins Weekly, a newspaper serving the greater Ithaca, NY area.[7]
Nicastro's ancient fiction, including Empire of Ashes and The Isle of Stone, is marked by a willingness to explore the dark underside of popular historical exploits. In Ashes, he presents the career of Alexander the Great from the angle of a skeptical Athenian soldier/historian who must debunk Alexander's official divinity to save himself from a charge of sacrilege. Classicist and expert in Alexander studies Prof. Jeanne Reames (Martin Professor of History, University of Nebraska) praised the book for "avoiding both apologetics and exaggerated sensationalism, making Empire of Ashes one of the best recent novels on the conqueror.”[8]Empire of Ashes was included in a list of all-time recommended historical novels by the Archaeological Institute of America.[9] In Isle of Stone, Nicastro presents a portrait of ancient Sparta during the Peloponnesian War that departs from what classical historian Paul Cartledge calls "the Spartan mirage". Instead, he reveals both the roots and the consequences of practices that, some say, made Sparta the Western world's prototype of a totalitarian society. Cartledge himself has praised Isle of Stone, observing "Nicastro's antiheroes of the isle of Sphacteria are the dark side of [Stephen] Pressfield's heroes in Gates of Fire: both demand and repay the attention of all lovers of expert historical fiction." His demythologizing approach has not been popular with all readers, however, drawing its share of negative reviews.[10]
Nicastro published his first book-length work of non-fiction in 2008. Circumference: Eratosthenes and the Ancient Quest to Measure the Globe tells the story of the first man to measure the size of the Earth accurately. In a review, the Bryn Mawr Classical Review observed some scholarly inaccuracies, but noted overall "Given the paucity of material in English on Eratosthenes, anything is a welcome addition, but this book is much better than nothing. In its pages, historians of science will learn much about the ancient world, and historians of the ancient world will learn much about science."[11]Circumference was subsequently cited as an "exemplar" text for 9th and 10th graders as part of the nationwide Common Core standards for English Language Arts.[12]
In 2010, Nicastro struck off in a new fictional direction with the publication of The Passion of the Ripper, a psychological study of a prominent suspect in the Jack the Ripper murders of 1888. In its review, Ripperologist magazine, a leading publication in the study of the Ripper killings, called the novel "a strong new entry in the world of Ripper fiction".
Novels
Empire of Ashes: A Novel of Alexander The Great (December 7, 2004)
The Isle of Stone: A Novel of Ancient Sparta (December 6, 2005) "A book for Spartophiles"[13]
Antigone's Wake: A Novel of Imperial Athens (April 7, 2007)
The Passion of the Ripper (June 23, 2010)
Hell's Half-Acre (November 10, 2015)
Ella Maud (September 30, 2018)
The River Through Rome (November 1, 2021)
The John Paul Jones Trilogy
The Eighteenth Captain (April 25, 1999)
Between Two Fires (November 1, 2002)
Book Three (TBA)
Non-fiction
Circumference: Eratosthenes and the Ancient Quest to Measure the Globe (November 25, 2008)
Agesilaus II was king of Sparta from c. 400 to c. 360 BC. Generally considered the most important king in the history of Sparta, Agesilaus was the main actor during the period of Spartan hegemony that followed the Peloponnesian War. Although brave in combat, Agesilaus lacked the diplomatic skills to preserve Sparta's position, especially against the rising power of Thebes, which reduced Sparta to a secondary power after its victory at Leuctra in 371 BC.
Sparta was a prominent city-state in Laconia in ancient Greece. In antiquity, the city-state was known as Lacedaemon, while the name Sparta referred to its main settlement on the banks of the Eurotas River in Laconia, in south-eastern Peloponnese. Around 650 BC, it rose to become the dominant military land-power in ancient Greece.
Eratosthenes of Cyrene was a Greek polymath: a mathematician, geographer, poet, astronomer, and music theorist. He was a man of learning, becoming the chief librarian at the Library of Alexandria. His work is comparable to what is now known as the study of geography, and he introduced some of the terminology still used today.
Pseudohistory is a form of pseudoscholarship that attempts to distort or misrepresent the historical record, often by employing methods resembling those used in scholarly historical research. The related term cryptohistory is applied to pseudohistory derived from the superstitions intrinsic to occultism. Pseudohistory is related to pseudoscience and pseudoarchaeology, and usage of the terms may occasionally overlap. Although pseudohistory comes in many forms, scholars have identified many features that tend to be common in pseudohistorical works; one example is that the use of pseudohistory is almost always motivated by a contemporary political, religious, or personal agenda. Pseudohistory also frequently presents sensational claims or a big lie about historical facts which would require unwarranted revision of the historical record.
Cleomenes I was Agiad King of Sparta from c. 524 to c. 490 BC. One of the most important Spartan kings, Cleomenes was instrumental in organising the Greek resistance against the Persian Empire of Darius, as well as shaping the geopolitical balance of Classical Greece.
Joan D. Vinge is an American science fiction author. She is known for such works as her Hugo Award–winning novel The Snow Queen and its sequels, her series about the telepath named Cat, and her Heaven's Chronicles books. She also is the author of The Random House Book of Greek Myths (1999).
Nabis was the last king of independent Sparta. He was probably a member of the Heracleidae, and he ruled from 207 BC to 192 BC, during the years of the First and Second Macedonian Wars and the eponymous "War against Nabis", i.e. against him. After taking the throne by executing two claimants, he began rebuilding Sparta's power. During the Second Macedonian War, Nabis sided with King Philip V of Macedon and in return he received the city of Argos. However, when the war began to turn against the Macedonians, he defected to Rome. After the war, the Romans, urged by the Achaean League, attacked Nabis and defeated him. He then was assassinated in 192 BC by the Aetolian League. He represented the last phase of Sparta's reformist period.
Philhellenism was an intellectual movement prominent mostly at the turn of the 19th century. It contributed to the sentiments that led Europeans such as Lord Byron and Charles Nicolas Fabvier to advocate for Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire.
Eduardo Matos Moctezuma is a Mexican archaeologist. From 1978 to 1982 he directed excavations at the Templo Mayor, the remains of a major Aztec pyramid in central Mexico City.
The Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) is a non-profit scholarly association devoted to the social studies of science and technology (STS). It was founded in 1975 and as of 2008 its international membership exceeds 1,200. In 2016, over 2,000 people attended the society's annual meeting in Barcelona, co-hosted by the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST). Its 40th anniversary celebration at Cornell University was attended by notable STS scholars such as Trevor Pinch, Sheila Jasanoff, and Bruno Latour.
The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World from the Archaic Age to the Arab Conquests is a 1981 book by the British classical historian G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, a fellow of New College, Oxford. The book became a classic of Marxist historiography.
Tong Enzheng was a prominent Chinese archaeologist, historian, designer, and science fiction author.
John Percival Droop was a British classical archaeologist of Dutch descent.
Josiah Ober is an American historian of ancient Greece and classical political theorist. He is Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis Professor in honor of Constantine Mitsotakis, and professor of classics and political science, at Stanford University. His teaching and research links ancient Greek history and philosophy with modern political theory and practice.
Robert Norman Zeitlin is an American professor emeritus of anthropology at Brandeis University. He has a B.A. in psychology from Cornell University, a B.S. in aeronautical engineering from Boston University, an M.A. in anthropology from City University of New York, and a M.Phil. and Ph.D. in anthropology from Yale University.
Paul Anthony Rahe is an American classicist, historian, writer and professor of history at Hillsdale College. He taught at Yale University, Cornell University, Franklin and Marshall College, and the University of Tulsa before taking up his present position.
Joseph Tabbi is a US literary scholar and theorist, notable for his contributions to the fields of American literature and electronic literature. He was the first scholar granted access to the archives of the reclusive novelist William Gaddis, and is the author of Nobody Grew but the Business: On the Life and Work of William Gaddis and the editor of The Bloomsbury Handbook of Electronic Literature (2017), Post-Digital: Critical Debates from electronic book review (2020), and an additional forthcoming volume from Bloomsbury Publishing. His other works include Cognitive Fictions (2002) and Postmodern Sublime: Technology and American Writing from Mailer to Cyberpunk (1996). He edits the scholarly journal Electronic Book Review (ebr), which he founded with Mark Amerika. Tabbi is also the founder of Consortium on Electronic Literature (CELL), an "open access, non-commercial resource offering centralized access to literary databases, archives, and institutional programs" in the humanities.
Earth's circumference is the distance around Earth. Measured around the equator, it is 40,075.017 km (24,901.461 mi). Measured around the poles, the circumference is 40,007.863 km (24,859.734 mi).
Pausanias was the Agiad King of Sparta; the son of Pleistoanax. He ruled Sparta from 445 BC to 427 BC and again from 409 BC to 395 BC. He was the leader of the faction in Sparta that opposed the imperialist policy conducted by Lysander.
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication is a 2014 collection of essays edited by Douglas Vakoch and published by NASA. The book is focused on the role that the humanities and social sciences, in particular anthropology and archaeology, play in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). The seventeen essays are gathered into four sections, which respectively explore the history of SETI as a field; archaeological comparisons for human-alien communication, such as the difficulties of translating ancient languages; the inferential gap between humans and aliens, and the consequences this would have for communication and trade; and the potential nature of alien intelligences.
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