Nicholas Nicastro
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Nicholas Nicastro is an acclaimed American novelist, with works set in Antiquity and during the American Revolution.
Born in Astoria, New York in 1963, he received a BA in English from Cornell University (1985), an MFA in filmmaking from New York University (1991), an M.A. in archaeology and a Ph.D. in psychology from Cornell (1996 and 2003). He has also worked as a film critic, a hospital orderly, a newspaper reporter, a library archivist, a college lecturer in anthropology and psychology, an animal behaviorist, and an advertising salesman.
His writings include short fiction, travel and science articles in such publications as The New York Times, The New York Observer, Film Comment, and The International Herald Tribune. He has been married to Maryanne Newton since 1995. Their daughter, Nell Lindsay Nicastro, was born in March 2002.
In 1996, he wrote and directed the documentary video Science or Sacrilege: Native Americans, Archaeology & the Law, a trenchant examination of the fight between scientists and native people for control of ancient remains. The video is currently distributed by Berkeley Media LLC, and has become a mainstay in college courses on this subject.
Contents |
[edit] Novels
- Empire of Ashes: A Novel of Alexander The Great (December 7, 2004)
- The Isle of Stone: A Novel of Ancient Sparta (December 6, 2005)
- Antigone's Wake: A Novel of Imperial Athens (April 7, 2007)
[edit] The John Paul Jones Trilogy
- The Eighteenth Captain (April 25, 1999)
- Between Two Fires (November 1, 2002)
- Book Three (TBA)
[edit] Work overview
Nicastro's ancient fiction, including Empire of Ashes and The Isle of Stone, is characterized by a willingness to explore the dark underside of popular historical exploits. In Ashes, he presents the career of Alexander the Great from the perspective of a skeptical Athenian soldier/historian who must debunk Alexander's official divinity to save himself from a charge of sacrilege. In Isle of Stone, Nicastro presents a portrait of ancient Sparta during the Peloponnesian War that departs from what classical historian Paul Cartledge calls "the Spartan mirage". Instead, he reveals both the roots and the consequences of practices that made Sparta the Western world's prototype of a totalitarian society.
