Don't Know Much About Mythology

Everything You Need to Know About the Greatest Stories in Human History but Never Learned

By: Kenneth C. Davis

Narrated by: John Lee

Employing the popular Don't Know Much About® style, with its familiar question-and-answer format, DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT MYTHOLOGY will explore the myths of the world, their impact on history, and their continuing role in our lives. It will offer listeners a wide-ranging, comprehensive, entertaining and listenable survey of the great myths of world civilizations, how they came to be, what they meant to the people who created them, how they influenced society, literature and art through history, and how they still speak to us today. Mythology is alive today in our art, literature, theatre, dreams, psychology--and certainly our language. "Pandora's Box," "Golden Fleece," "Labor of Hercules," and "Wheel of Fortune" are just a few of the words and phrases that come from a world of mythology and still color our speech. Using humor, contemporary references, and anecdotal material from mythology, extensive research based on recent archaeology which often reveals the history behind mythology and surprising information that breaks down conventional wisdom, DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT MYTHOLOGY will ultimately be about stories--the great and timeless tales that have fascinated people around the planet for several millennia.©2005 Kenneth C. Davis; (P)2005 Random House, Inc.

recommended

if you enjoy history or just learning about mythology. this is an incredible listen. book is well read.

good read

it gives a good overview of a very large topic. I live the simplistic language and style.

Good Introduction; Worth Reading

I have always enjoyed Davis' "Don't Know Much About Books." I realize they are designed to be overviews/introductions but I feel like they are occasionally much more in depth than you might expect.

This wasn't my favorite Davis book, but that's not totally fair to the review because it was partially due to the reader not paying attention to what he was selecting. For some reason I was thinking that this was going to be--more or less--don't know much about Greek/Roman mythology. I've been studying Ancient Rome/the Roman Empire recently and was thinking that it wouldn't be a bad idea to read a Davis book about the gods and myths.

Not that it had to be all Greek/Roman; essentially I was hoping that this book would give me an overview of the most well known gods and myths. In some ways this book does do that. The sections on Greek/Roman and Norse gods and myths are extensive. But this is an overview of the mythology of many, many different cultures. While I found all of those reviews to be interesting, it wasn't really what I was looking for.

Long and not what I expected

I thought this book would be full of stories about the greek mythology etc. It did not really seem to hit the mark although did go into some depth talking about all the various gods in different civilizations. So it was very long (three audiofiles) and not fantastically interesting. I am generous giving it a 3 I think. Maybe I will listen to it again as I can't really remember very many details of it!

Encyclopedic Treatment of the World's Mythology

I listened to Don't Know Much about Mythology because I had listened to Mr. Davis' Don't Know Much About the Bible and thought the former was fascinating. This book on mythology was a bit like listening to an encyclopedia. It recounts myths and the historical background for each of numerous cultures (Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Greek, Roman, Aztec, African, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Hawaiian, American Indian, etc., etc.) around the globe. The first 5 or 6 chapters were mostly historical in nature and seemed to drag on. I almost gave up. But the rest of the book was very interesting.