At the recommendation of the Outreach Prize Committee the APA Board of Directors has awarded the 2014 Outreach Prize to Robert B. Strassler, for conceiving, initiating, and editing the Landmark Ancient Histories.
Strassler is an independent scholar who studied history at Harvard, then attended Harvard Business School, before taking over a family oil drilling equipment business. He retained a passion for ancient history, however, and in 1976 became affiliated with Bard College at Simon's Rock, from which he received an honorary doctorate in 1996. When asked to teach a course on ancient history, he found that his students were prevented from engaging with the Greek historians by the rebarbative nature of the available translations. This inspired Strassler to develop the plan for the Thucydides volume that began it all.
Strassler's perspective on the ancient texts--that of a fascinated amateur (though he also published two articles in JHS)--enabled him to perceive the needs of a broad readership with particular clarity. The Landmark translations are characterized not only by lucidity, but by a whole suite of aids to the reader. As Glenn Bowersock wrote in the The New York Review of Books, "for the first time a Greekless reader could study the text closely and critically, much as a professional classicist would."
The Landmark books are very modestly priced, and thus widely accessible. Their classroom impact has extended well beyond classics, to such fields as History, Political Science, and Philosophy. Their influence outside the academy is evident not only from the sales numbers (more than 208,000 so far), but from the popularity of the series website (well over 400,000 visits since 2010).
The SCS is delighted to have this opportunity to recognize and honor the work of Robert Strassler in bringing the Landmark Ancient Histories to fruition.
Outreach Prize Committee
Ruby Blondell
, Chair
Martha Malamud
Peter Meineck