Natural disasters, the financial crisis, political strife, the Middle East, the treatment of wounded soldiers, free and fair elections, foreign relations, sports results, travel delays, death and taxes… The issues that make the headlines today are also the things people worried about 2,000 and more years ago. Learning how the people of the past dealt with them can prepare us to face the issues affecting us today.

The past is a virtual laboratory in which we can study how cause and effect plays out in different circumstances. Combining a researcher’s skill at finding unexpected connections in everyday events and a historian’s knowledge of source material, in ALL THINGS UNDER THE SUN: How Modern Ideas are Really Ancient Lindsay takes a clear eyed and often witty look at modern times through the longer perspective of ancient history and reveals that, as the old adage goes, ‘all things under the Sun, there’s nothing new’.

N.S. Gill of About.com writes “All Things Under the Sun bears comparison with some of the other recent works written for modern readers rather than classical historians, like Adrienne Mayor’s Scorpion Bombs and Vicki Leon’s How to Mellify a Corpse, that offer you a fast-paced, almost breathless tour of the ancient world”.