GREEK FIRE: The Story of Pericles

About the Book

From the invasion of Greece by Xerxes to the victory at Salamis over the Persians, the challenge of East vs. West transformed the pre-Christian world into a power grab still with us, between those who believe in freedom and those who rule with terror. No story explores this more deeply than that of Pericles, leader of Athens. Despite war and plague, defeat and disaster, the idea of democracy survived, to become the hope of mankind. Xerxes ruled Persia, which is now Iran. Xerxes vowed to annihilate the West, and his words echo today in Tehran. Nothing has changed.

Opening the pages of GREEK FIRE will introduce the reader to other unforgettable people--the cunning Themistocles, the philosopher Anaxagorgas, the playwright Sophocles, Pericles's best friend. And of course to Aspasia, that beautiful, intelligent girl from Miletus, who shared a love with Pericles that endured everything but Fate.

About the Author

Mother of four, grandmother of six, Army wife, ex-professor of humanities, Clara Rising, Ph.D., sold in 1986 without an agent to the first publisher to see it a long manuscript which became the Civil War novel IN THE SEASON OF THE WILD ROSE. Since then four more books, ranging from ancient Greece to the exhumation of President Zachary Taylor, have confirmed her belief that only through the insights of inspiration can the facts of history rescue us from a despair which too often accompanies reality. In the poems of THAT INWARD EYE Rising reaffirms her no-nonsense commitment to a cultural inheritance she considers essential for survival in the 21st century. A large part of that inheritance is an unabashed passion for Nature and for animals--perhaps our ultimate salvation in an increasingly crazy world. Now 81 and a great-grandmother, she lives and rides her horse in the countryside near Lexington, Kentucky.