A Noise of War: Caesar, Pompey, Octavian & the Struggle for Rome [Unabridged, Audiobook] [Audio Cassette]

A. J. Langguth (Author), Ed Blake (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1999

A historically accurate recreation of ancient Rome captures the politics and personalities of such figures as the aristocratic Caesar, sharp-tongued Cicero, Octavian, Cleopatra, and others whose struggles led to war, murder, and the Augustan Age. 35,000 first printing.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This superb short history of Julius Caesar's larcenous Rome examines the bloody struggle for power by looking at, in separate chapters, what each figure was doing during a short span of time. Crassus, Sulla, Spartacus, Cicero, Cleopatra, and other key players are given one or, in the case of major contenders, many chapters in which focus is set sharply upon them. By these discreet units, Langguth, best known for Patriots (LJ 2/15/88), clarifies and illuminates where other classical scholars might confuse. In this task he is admirably assisted by Ed Blake, whose leisurely narration gives the listener sufficient time to put the pieces in order. All historians of the Empire are taxed by the problem of how to retain the listener's interest when there is no one to care about, for Caesarean statesmanship was too corrupt for genuine heroes to emerge. What is needed is an eye for social custom and terminology that can show us, as Langguth does, the derivations of modern life so we can see the world freshly in the light of its distant past. Recommended for larger collections.?Peter Josyph, New York
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Langguth's narrative of the fall of the Roman republic begins in 81 B.C. with the confrontation of Julius Caesar and the dictator Sulla and the emergence of Marcus Tullius Cicero. Langguth then proceeds, through a series of progressively graver crises and progressively closer approaches to one-man rule, to the emergence of Caesar as supreme power. The intrigues and wars that followed constitute hardly more than an epilogue, for the republic was dead. Caesar and Cicero are the focal figures in Langguth's version of that story, but a host of other memorable actors are vividly portrayed. Langguth's concern throughout is readability, and this he certainly achieves. Fans of Colleen McCullough's massive fictional coverage of the same events will find Langguth's work a valuable companion to hers. Roland Green --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: Recorded Books; Unabridged edition (November 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0788703072
• ISBN-13: 978-0788703072
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5 x 2.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,862,806 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Caesar, Pompey and Cicero - a Good Introduction, July 7, 2006

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David Stapleton (California) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Noise of War: Caesar, Pompey, Octavian and the Struggle for Rome (Hardcover)

I bought this book for two reasons: Pompey's campaign against the Cilician pirates (5 pages) and the bibliography (8 pages). While I was a little disappointed in the brief coverage of the campaign, I was not disappointed in the bibliography (I have ordered several books from it already).

Readers should understand that this is not an extensive volume on the history of Rome during the lives of Caesar, Pompey and Cicero. It is, however, a wonderfully told brief overview of those times. Consider this as a starting point for the novice to Roman history in the first century BC. The author writes in an easy style that makes the book very readable. Langguth makes the occasional effort to get inside the heads of the various protagonists, but for the most part confines his efforts to presenting the details of history as is appropriate for an overview history. The history is told in sequential order skipping back and forth between the main personae and traces their rise to power and eventual fall from grace. There is just enough detail to whet the appetite for more.

For further reading on Caesar and the times try Caesar by Christian Meier. P-)

2 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Solid Popular History, September 14, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: A Noise of War: Caesar, Pompey, Octavian and the Struggle for Rome (Hardcover)

I read this book and liked it very much. Langguth dedicated this book to his high school Latin teacher who transcended a mechanical and arcane study of grammar and syntax and inspired the author and his fellow students with the history, "the story" if you will, of this long lost age which was so similar in many ways to our own. Prior to the Prostestant reformation and to a substantial extent even until 1965, Biblical scripture itself was the more or less the sole province of learned scholars and clerics who were privileged to know what had become an obscure academic and dead language. The story of the Gospel, the basic message, became obscured, if not somewhat lost, in pedantic and hair-splitting disputes over textual interpretations in the tradition of the pharisees of Jesus' day. It is in this context that Langguth seeks, as he explains in his Introduction, to bring the secular Scripture of the classics and its cultural legacy to the plebeian reader as was done with Holy Scripture begining five centuries ago. Thus, while Langguth's book is not perfect from an academic standpoint from which it does not pretend to proceed in any strict sense (for example no years known as B.C. ever existed in real time, that calendar was retroactively imposed centuries later), it is still actually more historically accurate than Shakespeare's accounts of these events and much more readable. This book is a good introduction to the history of this age and can be followed by a study in English translation of Plutarch to whom Langguth is largely faithful.

5 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Roman History Lite, June 18, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: A Noise of War: Caesar, Pompey, Octavian and the Struggle for Rome (Hardcover)

Considering the author did such a good job with the American Revolution in "Patriots," this book was a big disappointment.It lacks depth and is riddled with errors, e.g.,Cicero gave a great speech in defense of Milo; Crassus described as a "rich merchant". I was really annoyed with the author's use of the term "patrician" when the more correct term would be "Optimate" (hint: not all nobles were patricians).