I thoroughly enjoyed these three volumes, but have no desire to review Gibbon's text: Anyone considering reading the Decline And Fall is presumably well aware of Gibbon's reputation for entertaining prolixity. Rather, I would praise the books themselves. I borrowed a different volume of the Everyman's Library from the library, and was taken with the format, which combines the convenient size of a trade paperback with the sturdy binding of a hardcover book. While these books will probably not survive to grace the shelves of my (hypothetical!) grandchildren, I read them both sitting in an armchair with the book in my lap and also lying in bed, holding the book by the bottom. Such treatment would have devastated the spine of a paperback, but these books look very nearly new after a complete reading. Plus, each book has a ribbon sewn into the binding for use as a bookmark; it's a small thing, but it's amazingly nice to have a bookmark that can never blow away or get lost beside your chair or bed.
On the negative side, there are a few misprints; the Garamond font seems to me to be a poor choice, that leaves the pages vaguely muddy looking; and at 60, I found it hard to make out the small superscript numbers that call out the footnotes.
Finally and fatuously, I do doubt that I am the only reader whose erudition is not up to reading the Latin, Greek, and French in the footnotes! Should Everyman's / Knopf condescend to do a new edition (the current one appears to date from 1995) it would be great if they added translations.
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