The Sunken Kingdom

by Peter James

Book Overview

This work suggests a solution to a mystery which has baffled scholars for nearly 2400 years - since Plato first wrote about Atlantis. It reviews previous theories and shows why they will not work. Atlantis could not have been in the Atlantic; nor was it the volcanic island of Santorini near Crete, as currently held. Through an analysis of the sources available to Plato, it becomes clear that the story of Atlantis came from western Turkey, where about...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0224038109
• ISBN13: 9780224038102
• Release Date: November 1995
• Publisher: Random House UK
• Length: 338 Pages
• Weight: 1.34 lbs.

Customer Reviews

He is probably right

This is a curious piece of work. Peter James is not an academic, but a popular writer; however, he has a thorough grounding in academic research, and his work is most often dignified and useful. This has the making of a first-rate piece of research: the solution it proposes is built on very well-grounded view of the evolution of Greek legend, and involves a minimum of unlikelihoods (although some of it depends on whwther we can expect a Greek noble family to preserve traditions altogether unknown outside its circle, since James' solution involves the handing down of garbled accounts of a major disaster into Plato's own family, which was very blue-blooded indeed). Indeed, if it was a matter of the theory alone, I would say that James is probably right and recommend this book unreservedly.However, there are features about it that remind us that James is a popularizer, not to say a vulgarizer. The historical account of the theory of Atlantis is justified and pleasant, but the silly partisan defence of Plato is simply overblown posturing verging on the crankish; nor does Plato need it. This is a valid piece of work, but one could wish that James had given it a different shape.

Condensed Information with an Air of Mystery

This book, as you may know, is about Atlantis. But it provides a generous amount of information about a variety of related topics which is bound to amaze the reader. This is not really pro-Atlantean, in other words the author doesn't believe that there once existed a super-civilized continent that disappeared into nothing. So, no science-fiction or whizzing hover-cars or much about the story-book Atlantis at all. Instead you get a purely scientific account which can be a bit hard to get used to, but which ends up as an extremely interesting piece of work. Recommended.