Books that cover the full scope of Greek history.

"Modern Greece" is the era of the independent nation-state of Greece, an eventful period including - just since WWII - a civil war, many government changes, the military dictatorship of "the colonels", democracy's restoration, and Greece's evolution into the economy of modern Europe and the Balkan scene - at least until the financial crisis hit.

Rebelling against the centuries of Turkish occupation, and taking advantage both of the decline of the Ottoman Empire and the sympathy of classically trained European "philhellenes," Greeks waged a seven year war to win their independence. Conducted in the usual Greek style: fractious, heroic, and colorful.

For several centuries, the country was part of the Ottoman Empire. Turkish overlords varied from enlightened to despotic but it was a time of suffering and taxation without services or representation. There was, in many places, considerable freedom to manage local affairs, and the Orthodox church was not suppressed.

For a thousand years this provided the cultural matrix for the nation providing both a religion that shaped many aspects of life and also significant art. During this time Franks and Venetians were present in the territory.

The Romans admired and adopted Greek culture as their own. In this climate of Roman rule and Greek language the early Christian church was shaped with the early bishops and theologians using Greek ideas and philosophy to develop the foundational theological doctrines of the new religion.

Alexander the Great seized control of his father's kingdom of Macedonia and in a decade of constant war journeyed as far as India before dying at the age of 33. His political kingdom did not survive his death, but he spread Greek culture through the middle east.

While Athens had lost its political power, it remained a center of learning especially for philosophy (Aristotle) and science.

The Parthenon; the plays of Sophocles, Aeschylus, Aristophanes & Euripides; the history of Thucydides, Herodotus and Xenophon; the philosophy of Socrates and Plato; the leadership of Themistocles & Pericles; sculpture, architecture, poetry. Oh, yea - one other thing: they invented democracy.

And then -- they threw it all away in war with Sparta.

Before the miracle of the 5th century, there had been significant developments in math, science (Pythagoras) and poetry (lyric poets such as Sappho). The first philosophers are in this time as well. The first steps of the formation of the city-states and democratic reforms occur.

Ancient Greece of the classical era itself had an ancient history almost as long as the period from the classical period to now. Greeks of the Classical period looked past the centuries of the dark ages to sites so old they had no knowledge of how they came to be.

The stories told by Homer in the Iliad and the Odyssey were long thought to be pure fiction until the ancient cites of Mycenae and Troy (and others) were discovered in the 19th century. Now we know that there was a sophisticated empire based in Mycenae in the Peloponnesus region.

The discovery of the huge palace at Konossos led to our awareness of an empire based in Minoan Crete that was later overcome by the Mycenaens.

Among the cultural artifacts from this area are a collection of art objects, known as "Cycladic," that in their geometric and abstract form look surprisingly modern.

Settled agriculture has been found in Greece as early as 6,500BCE.