"Five hundred years before Christ in a little town on the far western border of the settled and civilized world, a strong new power waw at work... Athens had entered upon her brief and magnificent flowering of genius which so molded the world of mind and of spirit that our mind and spirit today are different...what was then produced of art and of thought has never been surpassed and very rarely equalled, and the stamp of it is upon all the art and all the thought of the western world."  - From the book
 
A perennial favoirte in many differen editions, Edith Hamilton's best-selling The Greek Way captures the spirit and achievement of Greece in the fifth century B.C. A retired headmistress when she began her writing career in the 1930's, Hamilton immediately demonstrated a remarkable abilitiy to bring the world of ancient Greece to life, introducing the world to the twentieth century. The New York Times called The Greek Way a "book of both cultural and critical importance". 
 
Edith Hamilton won the National Achievement Award in 1950, received honorary degrees of Doctor of Letters from Yale University, the University of Rochester, and the University of Pennsylvania, and was the member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1957 she was made an honorary citizen of Athens and was decorated with the Golden Cross of the Order of Benefaction by King Paul of Greece.