Nicholas Nicastro

Nicholas Nicastro is a historical novelist.

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 Cornell dissertation research on how humans respond to the vocalizations of domestic cats got some attention from the news media, especially in publications aimed at "cat people" [1] [2] [3]

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. In 1996, he wrote and directed the documentary video Science or Sacrilege: Native Americans, Archaeology & the Law, an examination of the conflict between scientists and native people for control of ancient remains. [4] The video is currently distributed by Berkeley Media LLC, and is often shown in college courses on this subject.

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, some say, made Sparta the Western world's prototype of a totalitarian society. "Empire of Ashes" did receive several negative reviews. One critic, Kathryn Yelinek, concluded that "Nicastro wrote a novel about a topic that ultimately got away from him. I can only assume that the book was rushed to print to coincide with the recent film."

In 2010, Nicastro struck off in a new direction with the publication of The Passion of the Ripper, a psychological study of a prominent suspect in the Jack the Ripper murders of 1888. In its review, Ripperologist magazine, a leading publication in the study of the Ripper killings, called the novel "a strong new entry in the world of Ripper fiction" [5]

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) "A book for Spartophiles"^[1]
• Antigone's Wake: A Novel of Imperial Athens (April 7, 2007)
• The Passion of the Ripper (June 23, 2010)

The John Paul Jones Trilogy

1. The Eighteenth Captain (April 25, 1999)
2. Between Two Fires (November 1, 2002)
3. Book Three (TBA)

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Non-Fiction

• Circumference: Eratosthenes and the Ancient Quest to Measure the Globe (November 25, 2008)

External links

• Official website
• Facebook readers' page
• Empire of the Ashes Book Review

Notes

1. ^ Slingshot Sept 09 p45

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Name	Nicastro, Nicholas
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Date of birth	1963
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