Customer Reviews

A History of Rome

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I ordered this book for my undergraduate Roman history class before I realized what a piece of crap it was. Get Michael Grant's book instead, or Cary and Scullard's, old as it is. Anything else: I spend valuable time in class and outside it propping up this book because of its many defects. The text consists of a mishmash of poorly-organized subheadings, randomly-inserted series of bullet points and "feature" boxes. There is no sense of the big picture, which is so important for undergraduates, and no way of assessing which material is more important, and which is trivial (and there's a lot of trivial material in here.) One of my colleagues calls it "dog barf": a mix of subjects with no organization or overarching analysis. The writing is filled with phrases in quotation marks that have no sources cited -- exactly what I tell my students NOT to do in their papers. The translated French sentences with their long series of subclauses and odd syntax are difficult reading. The images are if possible even worse. The text refers to objects like the warrior of Capestrano as if everyone were expected to know what it was (why would they be taking Roman history if they did?) which are not illustrated. There is no map which shows where Dacia, Pannonia, or Germania are, all regions which are hugely important in understanding the empire. The periodically inserted plans of Rome (whose references reveal they are essentially xeroxed from other people's books) mark the outlined buildings with numbers, but nowhere is there a KEY. I can't believe the editors passed this thing twice. I'm going to scrutinize offerings from Blackwell much more carefully from now on.

Marcel Le Glay et al's History of Rome was the first History book on Rome I read. The book was relatively well written, and took an interesting look on Rome's decline. Unfortunately, it focused largely on the Leaders and the royal/imperial families of Rome; the book tended to focus more on their lives then on the Roman Empire's history itself. The section on Augustus was thorough and very interesting. The middle and end of the book were especially good, but the beginning lacked detail. There is an absence of information on this part of Rome's history, and the book tended to breifly talk about important events during those 500 years. The book's examination on the culture of the Roman Empire I find is much too succinct. For its brevity it was excellent; it is admirable that one can write such a tasteful book in such small space. If one wants a helpful guide to the entire history of Rome pick up this book.

This book truly got me reading more in depth in Roman History. I've read other Roman History books for instence, The Roman Empire by Colin Welles, and Roman Provincial Administration by J. S. Richardson and this was in a league of its own. Le Glay and compatriots made A History of Rome very enjoyable. Truthfully, I had a hard time putting the book down. This book deserves 5 stars.

There is little grace here. Perhaps the translation into English has casued this, but the book is a hodge-podge of dates and names, the latter often tossed off as if the reader is already famliar with them. There is nearly nothing about the daily lives of the millions of people involved in this long period of human history, as the narrative, what there is of it, flits from decade to decade. A fine example of why many people hate history. Perhaps David McCullogh should turn his gaze toward Rome.

This book has to take the prize as the worst translation I have ever seen. The mangled, convoluted syntax makes it almost impossible to follow the prose. I challenge you to get past the first sentence without having to read it three times (it doesn't even make grammatical sense).

I won't comment on the content, since I put the book aside after only a few chapters. Please don't waste your money on this.

I think everyone who knows me know that I love history. Even so, this book was one of the most dry, tedious things that I have ever read. This book exhibits exactly what the problem is with the way that history is taught in schools today. It was page after page of unpronounceable names, meaningless dates, and useless terminology. There was not even the slightest attempt at making history a continuous flow, connecting the dots or making it interesting with narrative. In addition, the author seemed to focus the most extensively on the most complex and boring aspects of history such as economics and population numbers. Mind-numbing. The only reason it gets even two stars is because it contains some good material that I can use as a reference later when bare facts and figures are needed. Lots of information; no presentation.

A very, very good book. It help explain the entire strata of Roman society. It aslo helped open my eyes on not just the rise of Rome but the end of Rome also. A must for any serious student of Roman history.

I was promised a used but unmarked text. I received a paperback text with the majority of pages painted in blue marker making in unusable and unacceptable to me.
Had the merchant made clear the condition of the book in the first place, I would never have wasted his time and my money.
I was very disappointed.