Robin Lane Fox's Top Book Recommendations

Want to know what books Robin Lane Fox recommends? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Robin Lane Fox's favorite book recommendations of all time. At Shortform, we know books. Our book guides are the best in the world. Learn why.

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The World of Late Antiquity 150-750

Peter Brown, Geoffrey Barraclough

4.0

This remarkable study in social and cultural change explains how and why the Late Antique world, between c. 150 and c. 750, came to differ from "Classical civilization."

These centuries, as the author demonstrates, were the era in which the most deeply rooted of ancient institutions disappeared for all time. By 476 the Roman empire had vanished from western Europe; by 655 the Persian empire had van

Recommended by Judith Herrin and Robin Lane Fox.

Robin Lane Fox

What I like about this book is that it is focused on cultural, religious and philosophical changes, particularly in the Greek-speaking world where they were strongest. [source]

Judith Herrin

Really, Late Antiquity wasn’t much of a concept before that book came out. In very few words he managed to sketch out a whole new geography. [source]

Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety: Some Aspects of Religious Experience from Marcus Aurelius to Constantine

E. R. Dodds

4.3

Drawing on the abundant material available for the study of religious experience in late antiquity, Professor Dodds examines the personal religious attitudes and experiences common to pagans and Christians in the period between Marcus Aurelius and Constantine. World-hatred and asceticism, dreams and states of possession, and pagan and Christian mysticism are all discussed. Finally, Dodds considers

Recommended by Robin Lane Fox.

Robin Lane Fox

Peter Brown and ER Dodds were both Irishmen. Dodds was a precursor to Peter Brown and an iconic figure while Brown was writing. There are some subtle differences between the two. Dodds is particularly interested in individual case studies of figures known through literary texts. He was a superb literary scholar but as he had less of a grasp of the social setting I think he found it harder to place them in the shifting tone of their particular generations. And that is where Brown’s great strength lies. He is very good on the relationship between changes in the outer world and those in representations of the inner person. [source]

Augustine of Hippo: A Biography

Peter Brown

4.6

This classic biography was first published thirty years ago and has since established itself as the standard account of Saint Augustine's life and teaching. The remarkable discovery recently of a considerable number of letters and sermons by Augustine has thrown fresh light on the first and last decades of his experience as a bishop. These circumstantial texts have led Peter Brown to reconsider so

Recommended by Paula Fredriksen and Robin Lane Fox.

Robin Lane Fox

Peter Brown’s immense strength is placing the changes in Augustine’s outlook against the changing tone and social pressures of the eras and locations in which he moved. [source]

Paula Fredriksen

Brown relates a life story that lets us understand Augustine, sympathise with him and even to like and to respect him. That’s great writing. [source]

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The Inner Citadel: The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius

Pierre Hadot, Michael Chase

4.5

The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius are treasured today—as they have been over the centuries—as an inexhaustible source of wisdom. And as one of the three most important expressions of Stoicism, this is an essential text for everyone interested in ancient religion and philosophy. Yet the clarity and ease of the work's style are deceptive. Pierre Hadot, eminent historian of ancient thought, uncovers

Recommended by Robin Lane Fox.

Robin Lane Fox

What is fascinating here is that he takes on the sort of ‘spiritual diary’ which Marcus Aurelius kept for his own interest. These meditations have often been seen as a rather rambling collection of maxims and thoughts. Brilliantly, they are brought into line by Pierre Hadot, who understands them as spiritual exercises. [source]

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Jews in the Greek Age

Elias J. Bickerman

4.0

One of our century's greatest authorities on the ancient world gives us here a vivid account of the Jewish people from the conquest of Palestine by Alexander the Great in 332 BCE to the revolt of the Maccabees. It is a rich story of Jewish social, economic, and intellectual life and of the relations between the Jewish community and the Hellenistic rulers and colonizers of Palestine--a historical n

Recommended by Robin Lane Fox.

Robin Lane Fox

This is a masterly book by one of the supreme scholars. Elias Bickerman was born in St Petersburg and left in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution to go to Germany, where, as a Jew, he eventually came under the threat of persecution. He was obliged to leave for Paris because the Nazis were in power. He ended up destitute on the shores of America. But he had already been trained by some of Europe’s greatest scholars, and he was fluent in the necessary languages. He was taken into a New York seminary and received by his fellow Jews before ending up as a professor at Columbia. [source]