Friday, April 21, 2023

Constantinople

I had no idea so many old images of Constantinople existed. Or that a serpent column (a bronze column topped with snakes) made as a votive for Apollo would wind up moved to Constantinople and used as a Christian monument. (Good grief! Amazon wants 104.5 for that book!)

The author's research appears on another site as well, which includes a section on the additional fathers: writings of the Church Fathers that aren't in the usual collections. You can spend a lot of time exploring...

3 comments:

Douglas2 said...

Interesting: Amazon lists the "list" price at $110, so that's with a discount. At https://www.allbookstores.com/book/compare/0190209062 they show the "suggested retail price" as $87.

This sort of price is all too typical for academic books. My theory is that the publishers consider the actual market for the book -- academics -- to be largely price insensitive, as they will may a free desk copy for themselves or pay for it from department funds, and they don't care what the university-library or the students (when required to buy it as a course book) will pay.

james said...

The price isn't fixed. Look later, and it will have changed. A new offering was "Collectible" at over a thousand dollars.

Douglas2 said...

Yes, the dynamic pricing on Amazon can be weird -- but $110 (US) is the current price listed on the OUP website.
I've been amused in the past when it seems that more-than-one-seller has set an automatic price that's slightly more (or slightly less) than their Amazon-selling competitor, and the two do a continuous price-ratchet one-way or the other until someone notices.
I've taken advantage of this more than once when the ratchet was in the downward direction, once getting a few dozen items for the normal price of one.