Hypatia: Her Life and Times

It pains me that people will read this book and think it’s all there is to know about Hypatia.If you’re looking for Faith L. Justice’s autobiography, written in the style of an 8th grader’s tumblr posts, this is the book for you.If you want a scholarly biography about Hypatia of Alexandria, look elsewhere.This is predominantly a collection of bizarre blog posts in which the author discusses herself and her historical fiction novel, set in Alexandria c. 415.Very little about Hypatia is sprinkled in. And the author freely confesses the information presented is not exhaustive. She continuously repeats a few major facts that you can find on Hypatia’s wikipedia page, but says any other facts are too minor to bother with...?The biased presentation of the information is shocking. Justice even admits, at one point, that she pushes a particular interpretation of the historical timeline because it suits the narrative of her fictional novel!The author clearly has strong feelings about occultism. She is very defensive about the idea that Hypatia may have practiced astrology or magic - implying that any who did practice such things were uneducated fools. This is an anachronistic opinion. We know Hypatia was a Neoplatonist. Based on estimated dates of her life, she almost certainly studied the Neoplatonist philosopher Porphyry’s works. I hate to break it to Ms. Justice - but, Porphyry was a famous and highly respected astrologer. Astrology and occultism were widely practiced by people of all classes, religions, and education levels during Hypatia’s lifetime. Moreover, we know Hypatia studied and possibly taught astronomy - which, at the time, was not a separate subject from astrology, as it is today. Astronomers were astrologers and vice versa, there was no distinction. These are basic facts about the time period that the author might have known with even a little bit of research. Meanwhile, she is very keen to insist that Hypatia’s brutal murder was purely politically motivated, absolving the early Christian Church from responsibility.A professionally written biography should take a neutral approach to these topics. There is nothing inherently wrong with astrology and magic. And acknowledging that Christianity was an integral part of Hypatia’s killing does not condemn all Christians or the church as a whole.On top of all that, this book appears to not have been edited or even proofread. Typos abound.

This like many biographical subjects from ancient time periods was I'm sure hard to piece together. I think that F.L. Justice did "justice" to the subject by piecing together an extremely tattered and disconnected history of Hypathia. People, from any time period, have show the ability to be creative and embellish histories or events. We can never be sure what transpired in her life fully simply because we are trapped in the present with no real ability to look back.

I was reading everything I could get my hands on about Hypatia and stopped reading this book to take up some of the author's historical sourse. When I picked it up again, I was able to appreciate her interpretive approach. She complements the other available sources beautifully and they all corroborate her interpretation. Hypatia's non-confessional platonism was no threat to anyone. The circumstances of her death have overshadowed the story of how she lived.

Great product!

This book is a license to print money. Did no research and spent most of the book being a film critic, notably the Rachel Weisz movie which was far more interesting than this piece off crap.Faith kept quoting Michael Deakins book so why don't you just go out and buy that and save the torture.Repeats herself constantly to fill the pages all 100 or so only.Hypatia deserves better than this. Poor woman won't get any peace.

Some interesting facts well researched. Good insite to Hypatia. But one great error. Author states “Hypatia taught Plato Aristotle. NoWay! They lived nearly 1,000-1,200 years before Hypatia. I would offer Hypatia read their texts and they I turn influenced her. Terrible mistake!

The book arrived timely and as described. Enjoyed the first few pages I've read so far. I would say the text is well written. I recommend the book to all those interested in the late third and early fourth century Alexandria, Egypt, and to those who simply enjoy the occasional trip to the past. Thank you, Gerald

Cuts through the fiction around Hypatia and lists the actual sources in a series of articles. By a historical novelist who does her research and then shares.

Hypatia is one of these characters in history you hear a little about from various sources - mathematicians, historians, feminists - each group using her as an example of what the group is trying to prove. Here is a book devoted entirely to Hypatia, her life and times, well written and well researched, giving more details about the woman herself.

Not what I expected. This is a collections of papers about the subject.

Perhaps a little briefer than the few biographic works out there, but it does help point out the fact from the fiction in the recent film Agora.

Author Faith L Justice states in her preface to this work: 'Since these various pieces were written over time and for different audiences, there is some repetition of information.' Having perused this work with this piece of information in mind, I was not put off by these repetitions. Far from it, in fact, because it means I didn't need to 'look back' so much to refresh my memory. What I like most is Faith L Justice's obvious love and enthusiasm for her subject, which imparts itself to the reader. Much can be learned about Hypatia by reading this work.The work is divided into three parts: Section 1: Hypatia's Life. Section 2: Hypatia's Times. Section 3: This is about the writing of Faith L Justice's novel: 'Selene of Alexandria.' and contains a copy of the first chapter of that work. Besides these three sections, there's a preface and a piece about the author, but no index. I think that Faith L Justice's endearing bubbliness means she and Hypatia would probably have got along just fine together had it been possible for the two of them to meet. It would be a boring old world if we all had the same stiles and approaches concerning the study of historical characters. This endearing wee volume empathises well with other, more conventional, works concerning Hypatia, the all time great mathematician who was murdered by a mob of fanatical Christians.

While I quite a lot from this book, I found it extremely repetative ( the author warns us at the start of the book, but I wasn't quite prepared for that much of repetition). I feel that her editor/publisher should have sent her back to re-write it at least a few times to get it into an acceptable level for the general public. Sorry to sound so hard on her but the author made an interesting subject into a tedious read.