In Caroline Lawrence’s Adventure in Athens, the second of her Time Travel Diaries series, readers again meet Alex, a modern English boy of Greek descent.  In this novel, the ultra-rich Solomon Daisy (through a combination of trickery and promises) persuades Alex and his friend Dinu to travel to ancient Athens, search for Socrates, and learn what he is really like.   As part of this plan Daisy earlier arranged for Alex and Dinu to take a two-week intensive ancient Greek course, and this serves them surprisingly well; they have also acquired some knowledge of ancient Greece from a video game that seems to be modeled on Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, and from Philip Matyszak’s book Athens on 5 Drachmas a Day.  

Dinu’s younger sister Crina secretly follows the boys, and the three find themselves in Athens just before the Sicilian expedition; they get separated, are pursued by Scythian archers, encounter the engaging but completely unreliable Alcibiades, talk with Plato (age ten), and finally meet up with Socrates: a familiar and amiable figure who tells the children to remember that “the unexamined life is not worth living.”   Dinu is charmed by Alcibiades and doesn’t want to leave him; Crina admires Socrates but is disgusted by many features of life in ancient Athens, and her horrified commentary draws our attention to  everything from the condition of women and the enslaved to animal sacrifice and the absence of plumbing.  Alex has to work hard to get them all safely home again. - Deborah Roberts