Queen of queens, &c.

Today's New York Times featured an Op-Ed piece by the author Stacy Schiff, ruminating on what we'd find were we to stumble across (or into) the tomb of Cleopatra -- the lady or the legend. Ms. Schiff is evidently working on a biography of the great queen. It makes one wonder if there is something in the air -- after all, just last month, Diana Preston published her take on this august personage, Cleopatra and Antony: Power, Love and Politics in the Ancient World.

Ms. Schiff and Ms. Preston are both wonderful writers of serious but accessible history. So I mean them no disrespect when I say that they are treading over ground already surveyed, masterfully, by Joyce Tyldesley, in last year's Cleopatra: Last Queen of Egypt (Basic, 9780465009404). This was the first, and to this point, really, still the only study of this mythic figure that chose to see her as an Egyptian, and not through the lens of her overbearing Roman neighbors. In this it was a serious contribution to scholarship. But as the reviews upon publication made clear, it was equally a revelation for the general reader. Publishers Weekly, for example, gave it a starred review:

This entertaining biography hits the elusive sweet spot between scholarship and readability…. Writing with an easy mastery of her subject, Tyldesley always seems to be able to lay her hands on the perfect lively detail, whether an excerpt from an obscure bureaucratic document or a description of a kind of giant robot that paraded through the streets of Alexandria pouring libations of milk from a gold bottle. Though she makes it clear we’ll never know what Cleopatra was ‘really’ like, Tyldesley provides a memorable journey through the rich and contradictory sources of our knowledge about her.

It won similar praise from outlets ranging from the Tucson Citizen to the Feminist Review -- and at greatest length from, of all places, Newsweek: "In the year of Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin, untangling the legend of Cleopatra has special urgency…. To regard Cleopatra as an Egyptian ruler instead of a male myth, and to assess her using scholarly and archeological tools, is a worthy goal. It seems long overdue."

I'm moved to mention all of that not just out of pride that we got there first. More, it's because noticing these other, similar works on Cleopatra has given me an even greater appreciation of what it is that Basic Books does best. Publisher John Sherer once went so far as to call it the Basic "formula": they look for recognized experts, conducting original research in support of unconventional ideas (or unconventional approaches to conventional subjects). They have a particularly keen eye for scholars who have developed outstanding academic reputations, but who are poised to address a wider (i.e. trade) audience.

Ms. Tyldesley is an excellent example. Others among our current authors would include:

Dean Falk, whose Finding Our Tongues (9780465002191) proposes a unique theory concerning the origin of language;

Richard Wrangham, whose forthcoming Catching Fire (9780465013623) makes some extraordinary claims regarding cooked food and human evolution;

and Nobel Laureate Frank Wilczek, whose The Lightness of Being (9780465003211) proposes little short of a Grand Unification Theory.

I just noticed those are all scientists -- but we've also introduced several incredibly talented historians, including James Palmer (author of The Bloody White Baron (9780465014484), "a fascinating portrait of an appalling man" - PW's starred review) and Timothy Snyder (The Red Prince (9780465002375), which "captures in shimmering colors the death of old Europe and the continent's descent into barbarism" - Shelf Awareness). It is great fun to get to magpie around in these lists-- whole worlds of new ideas, and of fresh approaches to old questions await.