Customer Reviews

Pompeii: White Star Guides - Archaeology

5 star:		(2)
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3 star:		(1)
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This is a fantastic guide to Pompeii that I took with me on the last visit I made to the city. The book provides an outstanding introduction to Pompeii examining topics such as the water supply, building techniques and city planning. Each page is filled with illustrations. The houses and public buildings are presented section by section - a small diagram of the area on the initial page followed by the buildings in the area. Each house has a diagram with letters identifying the rooms and is illustrated by several photographs of the house and artworks found within. Some of the houses and building, such as the theater, have reconstruction drawings to provide an indication as to how the building probably looked prior to the destruction of Pompeii. The Villa of Mysteries is particularly excellent with a diagram of the famous fresco with color photographs. There also is a helpful glossary in the back of the book.

The guide has a glossy paper cover and is able to withstand heavy use. I know because I dropped the book a couple of times while reading it on site. The guide is also very useful even if you are not contemplating a visit to Pompeii and are just interested in an excellent book about the city and its archaeological treasures.

this is a nice little book with TONS of careful, detailed information. The pictures are a little small, but they are good quality.
What I liked best was the artist's re-creations of what the buildings and the streets would have looked like. Since we get so much of our information about Roman interiors in general from Pompeii, this is really helpful to anyone interested in ancient Rome, not just people touring Pompeii.
A very good value.

This is a very rich guide to the ruins of Pompeii. The author is, without doubt, a scholar of distinction. The reconstructive drawings are second to none. The layout of the book is beautiful. However, as an introduction to the subject, the book is a struggle. The writing is often turgid, burdened with unnecessary archaeological terminology: The hip bone is connected to the peristyle, the peristyle is connected to the pronaos, the pronaos is connected to the portico, the chalcidicum is connected to the knee bone.... The glossary at the end of the book is hopelessly inadequate - a mere afterthought. The publishers would do well to study the DK Pulishing model and invest the book with a few introductory pages explaining the vast terminology employed throughout the work with architectural diagrams and arrows. It might then be a masterpiece.