Greece is a country famed worldwide for its physical beauty, wealth of antiquities and other vestiges of its unsurpassed ancient civilisation. Yet despite over ten million annual visitors and an open and inviting culture, modern Greece is not an easy country for outsiders to understand or comprehend fully. Countless tourist guides extol its resorts and archaeological tomes unravel its classical past, but there are few books that attempt to explore the many complexities of Greek life and lifestyles right here in the present.

Until now, that is, "It’s All Greece to Me: Impressions of Contemporary Greek Life", by longtime Athens News contributor John FL Ross, offers an accessible and dependable guide to the nooks and crannies of the modern Greek character, mentality, customs and attitudes. It offers a sharp-eyed and challenging, yet sympathetic, look at the rapidly changing nature of contemporary Greece at the dawn of the new millennium. Throughout, Ross writes with the clarity, gentle wit and perceptive insight that readers have come to expect from the author of the long-running and popular Thursday column On Second Thought.