Black Sea

This historical travel book treats the Black Sea as one region rather than a set of national shorelines. Ascherson moves among ancient Greek colonies, Scythian and steppe peoples, Byzantine and Ottoman rule, the Russian and Soviet empires, and the late-twentieth-century states around the water. He writes about Crimea, the Pontic Greeks, Cossacks, Jews, and the trading cities that lived by the sea's connections. Archaeology, myth, and modern politics sit side by side. The argument is geographic and cultural: that the sea's rim has been a meeting ground of Europe and Asia, repeatedly settled, emptied, and renamed, whose present borders do not erase older overlays.

Bound in buckram with a Modigliani paper side. Brown slipcase.