HANNIBAL 2017

Simon and Schuster

One of the greatest commanders of the ancient world brought vividly to life: Hannibal, the brilliant general who successfully crossed the Alps with his war elephants and brought Rome to its knees.

Hannibal Barca of Carthage, born 247 BC, was one of the great generals of the ancient world. His father, Hamilcar, was also a great strategist and master tactician who imposed Carthaginian rule over much of present-day Spain. After Hamilcar led the Carthaginian forces against Rome in the First Punic War, Hannibal followed in his father’s footsteps, leading Carthage in the Second Punic War.

From the time he was a teenager, Hannibal fought against Rome. He is famed for leading Carthage’s army across north Africa, into Spain, along the Mediterranean coast, and then crossing the Alps with his army and war elephants. Hannibal won victories in northern Italy by outmaneuvering his Roman adversaries and defeated a larger Roman army at the battle of Cannae in 216 BC. Unable to force Rome to capitulate, he was eventually forced to leave Italy and return to Carthage when a savvy Roman general named Scipio invaded north Africa. Hannibal and Scipio fought an epic battle at Zama, which Hannibal lost. The terms of surrender were harsh and many Carthaginians blamed Hannibal, eventually forcing him into exile until his death.

To this day Hannibal is still regarded as a military genius. Napoleon, George Patton, and Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr. are only some of the generals who studied and admired him. His strategy and tactics are still taught in military academies. He is one of the figures of the ancient world whose life and exploits never fail to impress. Historian Patrick N. Hunt has led archeological expeditions in the Alps and elsewhere to study Hannibal’s achievements. Now he brings Hannibal’s incredible story to life in this riveting and dramatic book.

Available at:
Amazon.com
Barnes & Noble
BAM (Books A Million)
Indie Bound

Release date July 2017.

WHEN EMPIRES CLASH 2015

This military history text from Stone Tower Books (a new imprint of Lampion) takes a close and engaging look at twelve battles that shaped the ancient world and the imperial ambitions of ancient civilizations, including the Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Greeks, Persians, and Romans. These memorable, if not always decisive, battles include Qadesh (1274 BCE), Nineveh (612 BCE), Marathon (490 BCE), Issus (333 BCE), Trebbia (218 BCE), Cannae (216 BCE), Cartagena (209 BCE), Alesia (52 BCE), Actium (31 BCE), Masada (73 CE), Chalons (451 CE) and Tours (732 CE). Placing these battles in the larger contexts of the surrounding wars in which they were fought, the book focuses on the strategy and tactics of the military commanders who led these legendary battles, showing how they outwitted their enemies and innovated within the framework of ancient warfare.

The book also examines the propaganda campaigns waged by the various sides, which created dramatic narratives and cultural myths. These narratives and myths shaped perceptions of these battles during ancient times. But, in some cases, the battles continue to shape the cultural memory of these great battles up to the modern day.

New book release date is late December 2015.

LANDSCAPES ANTIQUE AND IMAGINED 2014

Patrick Hunt’s fifth collection of poetry - in this case a hundred poems - follows his antiquarian and eclectic interests across history, art and music, mostly filtered through the meme of Classicism. At times lyrical, ekphrastic, and ironic, his influences range from Sappho and Martial to Coleridge and the Bible as well as Rabelais and Verlaine.

Landscapes have always inspired artists and poets, whether real or imagined, and journeys are remembered through time and space, from ancient sites to ekphrases of paintings, especially Flemish or Italian Renaissance imagery. Poems include musings on artworks by Bruegel, Paulus Bril, Gozzoli, Grunewald and others.

Pirene Press, December 2014

ISBN: 978-0-578-15577-7

Buy this book soon at Corinthian / Pirene Press or Stanford Bookstore or at Amazon.com

A FEW HUNDRED THOUGHTS 2013

A collection of 264 original aphorisms and fabulae (parables), inspired by Voltaire, Nietzsche and Kafka, these poetic, philosophical historical musings are distilled to their essence. Also unique tales about Alexander the Great, unusual museums, and fictive history in the vein of Borges and Umberto Eco.

From James Geary's blog, All Aphorisms, All the Time 2008: "Patrick Hunt is an archaeologist, writer, composer, poet, art historian—and damn fine
aphorist…He has a knack for making discoveries: In 1996, he found the 9,000-foot-high quarry for the Temple of Jupiter in the Fenetre de Ferret pass
adjacent to the Great St. Bernard Pass, and he directed a team that found a Roman silver coin hoard in the Swiss Alps in 2003. His aphorisms come from several different books, including Faust (1982), Proverbs (1989), and The Laws of Nature (2000).”

ISBN: 978-0-578-13533-5
December 2013

Buy this book at Corinthian / Pirene Press or Stanford Bookstore or at Amazon.com

WINE JOURNEYS, MYTH & HISTORY 2012

This is a wine history from Anatolia to Europe covering 9000 years. In belle lettre and anecdotal form, this book shares wine journeys across multiple continents. It studies cultivation and purposes of wine and grapes and early agriculture since the Neolithic, also telling the myths of Dionysus and Bacchus from their Greek and Roman contexts. From Etruscans to Sicilians, from Roman legionaries to Charlemagne, from French monks across Bordeaux, Burgundy and Alsace, from the Rhine to the Rhone, from Tyrolean to Swiss vineyards, wine history is told with literary quotations and notes from the book of Genesis in the Bible to Homer, Virgil, Horace, Athenaeus, Chaucer, Rabelais and many other writers.

Hunt has taught postgraduate courses on the History of Wine at Stanford and elsewhere and has lectured at wineries, conferences, symposia and related venues around the world, including for the Napa Valley Vintners Association at Meadowood Resort in St. Helena, Napa Valley. He has traveled in wine journeys across five continents and annually spends time in viticultural regions in France and Italy as well as California.

Published by Cognella Academic Press, December, 2012

ISBN: 978-1-62661-064-4
186 pages 8x10

Buy this book at Cognella Academic Press or Amazon.com

CRITICAL INSIGHTS, The Inferno 2012

Contributed original essays in this new book edited by Patrick Hunt include new work by Robert Harrison, Heather Webb, David Lummus, Nicole Rudick and Elizabeth Coggeshall. Patrick Hunt also contributed original essays and other material.

This volume is intended to make Dante's Inferno more accessible to inquiring students. Essays include a close reading of Dante, a chapter comparing and contrasting Dante's Inferno to his other writing, a history of the critical response to his work, and a chapter on the cultural and historical context of the poem.

Dante deserves a new reading with each successive generation, not because his poem evokes an obsolete Christian world or relic philosophy worthy of being curated in the museum of intellectual history, nor because he bridges several influential worlds long gone from view but still deeply rooted in our art, literature and common figurative language.

Dante is immortal partly because his epic poem distills more creative genius in the few decades it took to write than many cultures preserve of their legacy over millennia. Dante is at the very heart of Western Culture.

Published by Salem Press, September, 2011

Review:

"This series makes a valuable addition to academic libraries supporting literature students both at undergraduate and at graduate levels as it presents different views and more in-depth articles..." Library Journal

Editor: Patrick Hunt, Ph.D., University College London
ISBN: 978-1-58765-838-9
September 2012 · 1 volume · 360 pages · 6"x9"

Buy this book at Salem Press or at Amazon.com

PUER NATUS EST: ART OF CHRISTMAS 2011

Seeing the Miraculous Through the Eyes of the Masters

The lavishly illustrated Puer Natus Est ("A Boy Child is Born" in Latin): Art of Christmas celebrates almost two thousand years of art on the theme of Advent. The book pairs artwork, mostly painting and other media like sculpture and mosaic, with narratives of the gospels and related literature. The written texts support the art and fill in perceived gaps in the story of Christ’s birth. The book begins with illuminated manuscripts from the medieval period and continues on through Giotto, Piero della Francesca, Gozzoli, Bellini, Botticelli, Raphael, Michelangelo, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Georges de la Tour and many others. Included in the book are representations of the Annunciation, the Journey to Bethlehem, the Adoration of the Shepherds, the Nativity, the Journey of the Magi, the Dream of Joseph and other timeless themes from what many call the greatest story ever told. The Advent season has inspired some of the world’s finest art. Puer Natus Est: Art of Christmas gives us the opportunity to view the miraculous through the eyes of the great masters.

This book is a labor of love over ten years (at publisher since 2006) and has been shared in many Advent lectures since 2000.

New book by Patrick Hunt, released in December 2011 as just published by Cognella Academic Publishing. 220 pages, over 70 full color illustrations, 7 x 10 in. ISBN 978-1-60927-520-4.

Buy this book at Amazon.com

Also can be purchased directly from publisher Cognella or Stanford Bookstore or from Books Inc. in Burlingame.

Reviews:

Books, Inq. The Epilogue (The Sunday Times Top 100 Blog) Dec. 23

"A Lovely idea..." Frank Wilson

The Book Haven: Blog for the Written Word (Stanford) Dec. 23 "The art of Christmas: the voice of the people rather than the voice of the powerful"

CARAVAGGIO (Life & Times Series) 2004

Born Michelangelo Merisi, as an adult he became known by the name of his birthplace. Caravaggio (1571-1610) was the most revolutionary artist of the Italian Baroque. Consistently emphasizing the humanity of his religious subjects, he established a new way of painting. The intensity of his chiaroscuro style is matched only by the drama of his life. Outlaw, heretic, murderer, and sensualist were a few of the charges brought against him by his contemporaries. Patrick Hunt’s wide-ranging professional and personal scholarship allows him to interpret Caravaggio’s complicated religious and classical imagery while anchoring his art in his life.

CARAVAGGIO was shortlisted for the Saroyan International Prize 2005.

Published by Haus Publishing Ltd., London, U.K. in 2004

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The Art Newspaper, London, Dec 2004, "... first class ... a rattling good yarn"

The Independent, London, March 2005, "strong narrative"

The Times of London, March 2005,"... the book is one in a series of useful short biographies"

About CARAVAGGIO from MERCURY NEWS Ltd, Australia, "In Print Attitude", "Part of the Life and Times series, this superb biography is an excellent introduction to the most revolutionary artist of the late Renaissance. Hunt's grasp of the facts is firm and he never lets the melodrama of Caravaggio's life get out of hand."

MYTH AND ART IN EKPHRASIS Fall, 2010.

This book is available at the Stanford Bookstore and Amazon.com!

Mythology has inspired countless generations of humanity for millennia, from the parent culture of a myth to cultures fairly removed in time, space and language. Poets, artists, historians and philosophers have interpreted the stories in many ways, and Greek and Roman myths in particular are rich in paradox and narrative wisdom that artists have also visually illustrated, often depicting the crux or dramatic climax of a story in close detail. Biblical material also provides a wealth of material for similar reinterpretations for artists or writers. Whether in language with figures like similes and metaphors, or in visual imagery from sculptures, mosaics, wall-paintings and other ancient media, retelling of mythology in parallel versions often borrow from each other and influence each other. For example, a wide range of artists including Dürer, Cranach, Rembrandt, Dore, Klimt, Waterhouse or anonymous ancient vase painters, mosaicists and sculptors reinterpret seminal texts of poets and thinkers such as Homer, Plato, Virgil, Ovid, Dante or biblical material.

Whether ancient or modern in its applications, Ekphrasis is an ancient Greek word that essentially has to do with literary versions inspiring visual artistic versions, or vice versa. Visual literacy can be as important as verbal literacy, and tracing these symbiotic influences and looking at their backgrounds are some of the primary foci of Patrick Hunt’s new book, Myth and Art in Ekphrasis.

Book released October, 2010 by Cognella Academic Publishing.

MYTH AND ART IN EKPHRASIS (Fall, 2010)

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REMBRANDT: His Life in Art 2006, 2007 2nd. ed.

This book is also available at the Stanford Bookstore!

Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-69) is the sublime and paradoxically familiar artist. Only the Greatest Masters and Geniuses of the first rank are easily called by one name. Yet even among these peers, few have the distinction of being household names and so often taken for granted as Rembrandt. Both the Romantic and Impressionist movements in art would be unlikely without him. Certainly the Baroque Era in which he lived emulated as well as eventually abandoned him within his poignant and troubled lifetime. Few artists are overshadowed by their own fame in their teens, only to be ignored in their old age like Rembrandt.

Which is the real Rembrandt? Genius, Curmudgeon, Master Engraver, Biblical Master, Hero Cult Figure, Vain, Miser, Greedy, Extravagant Spendthrift, Failed Businessman, Vindictive and Petty are just a few of the nouns and adjectives used to describe Rembrandt even in his own day. Perhaps all of these descriptions are “true” in one way or another. Although it would be impossible to prove many of these somewhat troubling descriptions, they are not necessarily contradictory. It must be one of the greatest paradoxes in art that Rembrandt, like Caravaggio before him, is known for being among the greatest of all religious painters while not being particularly outwardly religious. Rembrandt left no manual of his art, no revelatory journal of his life or handbook of his artistic techniques and very little correspondence has survived beyond little more than a handful of letters and a few brief notes, yet his work has profoundly influenced every generation of artists after him.

First released : Ariel Books, New York, November, 2006
Buy Now! Buy the book now at the Stanford Bookstore

REMBRANDT: His Life in Art, 2nd edition (2007) available.
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--- Reviews (April, 2008)---

"...Hunt sensitively considers how the circumstances of Rembrandt's life affected his art...for specialists this book has some ideas worth noting and that deserve to be more widely known...a highly readable and accessible work for the general public and an unexpected source of insight for scholars..."
-- from the A.L.A. journal CHOICE (American Library Association)

CLOUD SHADOWS OF OLYMPUS 2009

In Greek mythology, the Pirene Spring near Corinth was a place the winged horse Pegasus frequented and perhaps this spring even began when the hoof of Pegasus struck the rocky hill above the city. Pegasus in myth is associated with inspiration and the Muses.

The poems in this collection from 2006-2009 are mostly lyrical, many on mythological and Classical themes. Some have been published elsewhere, including in the Penguin Book of Classical Myths (2008) and in Akoué, a publication of the American School of Classical Studies, Athens in 2009 and likewise other poems have been published by the Classical Association of the U.K. in 2009, among other venues.

Cloud Shadows of Olympus: Collected Poems from 2006 - 2009 weaves a rich tapestry of classical imagery that transports the reader from the gates of Elysium to Cyrus’ garden at Pasargad and beyond. Drawing from an exensive knowledge of antiquity and its reception, the author presents a series of poems, each of which lovingly blends past and present. This lyrical collection of verses matches reollections of antiquity with a powerful evocation of a world that communicates to the sensory appreciation of the readers..

A Stanford first book reading and signing was celebrated at the Stanford University Bookstore, January 28, 2010.

Published by Pirene Press / Corinthian Publishing 2009

http://www.corinthianpress.com/index.html

Available December, 2009 onward at Stanford Bookstore, internet and soon on Amazon.com