A History of Rome

 

A History of Rome
A History of Rome
by Authors: Marcel Le Glay , Jean-Louis Voisin , Yann Le Bohec , David Cherry , David G. Kyle , Antonia Nevill
Released: September, 2004
ISBN: 140511083X
Paperback

Sales Rank: 115390
List price: $36.95
Our price: $36.95
Book > A History of Rome > Customer Reviews:
  Average Customer Rating:

A History of Rome > Customer Review #1:
Not a very good history

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.

A History of Rome > Customer Review #2:
A concise look at Romes History

Marcel Le Glay et als History of Rome was the first History book on Rome I read. The book was relatively well written, and took an interesting look on Romes 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 Empires 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 Romes history, and the book tended to breifly talk about important events during those 500 years. The books 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.

A History of Rome > Customer Review #3:
Never again

I ordered this book for my undergraduate Roman history class before I realized what a piece of crap it was. Get Michael Grants book instead, or Cary and Scullards, 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 theres 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 peoples books) mark the outlined buildings with numbers, but nowhere is there a KEY. I cant believe the editors passed this thing twice. Im going to scrutinize offerings from Blackwell much more carefully from now on.

 
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