The Greek state was created in 1828 from scratch and radically changed the lives of the people who created it with their imagination and revolutionary actions. It imposes its authority and legitimacy, its violence and power; it controls the violence between them; it cuts, judges, and punishes; it educates the young men and women, teaches them the law, order, submission, and patriotism. And they, in turn, reject this state by succumbing to it, they staff it to use it against each other, they surround it with national symbols and support it, they claim it and rise up to overthrow it and establish it from scratch. They express their nationalist fantasies, they pass on their liberating expectations to their children, and all together, they follow its flags, feed its treasury with taxes, and fuel its wars with their blood.

By writing this book, my goal was not to narrate "what happened" but to understand "why it happened". It was not to tell a story, but to interpret it. To explain the history of modern and contemporary Greece with the Greeks imagining one of the earliest democracies in the world and shaping it immersed in bursts of enthusiasm and civil hatred, struggling with the instability imposed on them by the fate of the country, its position at the crossroads of three continents, and shedding their blood facing empires and defying superpowers.
And with this History, I wanted to speak not only to the historian, the anthropologist, the economist, but also to the students and the general readers, those who love reading or even those who are not accustomed to it. They are the faces that constantly wander in the thoughts of every author and guide his hand and heart. They are the faces that have only two demands from the author: to share with them his knowledge, offering them some pleasure. Only two demands, but significant ones: they impose on the author clarity, simplicity, and elegance of writing. Because these are the only ways that an author has to truly approach the reader, the female reader - by looking them in the eyes.