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M.I. Finley

M. I. Finley (1912-1986), the son of Nathan Finkelstein and Anna Katzellenbogen, was born in New York City. He graduated from Syracuse University at the age of fifteen and received an MA in public law from Columbia, before turning to the study of ancient history. During the Thirties Finley taught at Columbia and City College and developed an interest in the sociology of the ancient world that was shaped in part by his association with members of the Frankfurt School who were working in exile in America. In 1952, when he was teaching at Rutgers, Finley was summoned before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee and asked whether he had ever been a member of the Communist Party. He refused to answer, invoking the Fifth Amendment; by the end of the year he had been fired from the university by a unanimous vote of its trustees. Unable to find work in the US, Finley moved to England, where he taught for many years at Cambridge, helping to redirect the focus of classical education from a narrow emphasis on philology to a wider concern with culture, economics, and society. He became a British subject in 1962 and was knighted in 1979. Among Finley’s best-known works are The Ancient Economy, Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology, and The World of Odysseus.

Et tu, Teddy White

Et tu, Teddy White

Caesar at the Rubicon

by Theodore H. White

The Authoress of the Odyssey

by Samuel Butler

November 21, 1968 issue

Up from Democritus

Democritus and the Sources of Greek Anthropology Association)

by Thomas Cole

The Idea of Progress in Classical Antiquity

by Ludwig Edelstein

June 20, 1968 issue

The Idea of Slavery

The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture

by David Brion Davis

January 26, 1967 issue

Must We Dig?

Introduction to Archaeology

by Shirley Gorenstein

They Found the Buried Cities

by Robert Wauchope

Testaments of Time

by Leo Deuel

New Roads to Yesterday

edited by Joseph R. Caldwell

Marine Archaeology

edited by Joan du Plat Taylor

Most Ancient Egypt

by William C. Hayes, edited by Keith C. Seele

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February 17, 1966 issue

Good and Bad History

Ancient Mesopotamia

by A. Leo Oppenheim

Daily Life in Greece at the Time of Pericles

by Robert Flacelière, translated by Peter Green

October 14, 1965 issue

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