I didn't actually read the whole thing, just the chapter on Cato...but that's really all I checked it out for, anyway, and it served that purpose adequately. ( )

Bought for its comprehensive coverage of ancient heroes, both literary & real. ( )

This is not so much a book about heroes, but a book about anti-heroes. Deeply flawed and in many ways extraordinarily selfish, the "Heroes" of the title are not your usual list. For example, the book includes El Cid, who essentially turned mercenary. The book is well written, but by the fourth chapter it begins to feel very tedious, since Hallett insists on trying to tie all the heroes together. Eventually the book starts sounding like "X--- was a lot like Y---, but different than Z--- in that he was more selfish, and he lacked the political acumen of T---..." After a few chapters of that, I had to put the book down. Still, it might be worth a read if one read only a chapter every couple of months; then the constant recapping might be a useful tool, rather than an annoyance. ( )

Lucy, presents an uncommon view of the “hero” as she reviews the lives of several men; from Achilles to Garibaldi. Usually self centered and answering only to their own moral precepts the heroes she presents are often blackguards, several having been thrown out of their own societies. But when all the chips are pushed to the center of the table and the very continued existence of the society is in question they turn to the outcast, the blackguard… and he saves them… becoming the hero.

The book is very well written and adds some interesting dimensions to the idea of hero. She covers Achilles, Alcibiades, Cato, El Cid, Francis Drake, Wallenstein, Garibaldi and Odysseus. All that she writes is informative but the heroes presented are even better understood when coupled with “Honor: A History” by Bowman.

Off hand the only hero I can think of in the 20th century is Churchill. There is T.E. Lawrence but he morphed into a hero “saving” Arabs rather than Brits