Review:I quite enjoyed this. I found it readable and instructive. One thing I've always done in the past when I wanted to read an account of Roman history is I've always chosen books that were too scholarly and got bogged down in niggling details such as the precise difference between various public offices or laws. This book doesn't make that mistake: it's readable and never boring.

My only complaint would be that since this book was sort of rushed to press (I'm guessing) to coincide with t... Read more

Review:This is a very good general account of Carthage. Aimed at a broad audience, this is probably a good summary of recent scholarship on Carthage. Any book on Carthage faces the major obstacle of the rather limited information on Carthage. Surviving Carthaginian documentation is scanty with the great majority of historical information coming from partial Greek and Roman historian supplemented by epigraphic and archaeological data. A good deal of this book is a careful recounting and analysis of ... Read more

Review:The book is a towering work and this audio version makes it easier to digest. The narrators style is appropriate but perhaps a little too fast as the text demands your attention - which is why I have only given it four stars, .The book itself deserves SIX stars. If you get distracted for a few moments, you can often find you have missed a key moment in the story. I have tried to slow it down on my iPhone, but the slowed version sounds like the narrator has suffered a partial stroke, and the voic... Read more

Review:I consider this book very informative, and believe it or not, enjoyable! However, the writer has a very high intellectual writing style, and if you have problems with reading definitions, you may want to have a dictionary ready! I love the old writing style! Read more

Review:The book is a towering work and this audio version makes it easier to digest. The narrators style is appropriate but perhaps a little too fast as the text demands your attention - which is why I have only given it four stars, .The book itself deserves SIX stars. If you get distracted for a few moments, you can often find you have missed a key moment in the story. I have tried to slow it down on my iPhone, but the slowed version sounds like the narrator has suffered a partial stroke, and the voic... Read more

Review:I can all but warn from reading this book because once you'll read it, you'll be hooked on history books for the rest of your life. I originally read other genre books, when my attention fell on a book by Adrian Goldsworthy, "How Rome Fell: Death of a Superpower". As the decline and fall of the Roman Empire is a subject of interest for many people, I was intrigued by the title as well and spontaneously decided to read it. It was a nice, easily understandable book that delineated chronologically ... Read more

Review:I consider this book very informative, and believe it or not, enjoyable! However, the writer has a very high intellectual writing style, and if you have problems with reading definitions, you may want to have a dictionary ready! I love the old writing style! Read more

Review:Cory O'Brien strikes gold in this book. What you get once passing through the hilarious and cheeky table of contents is a collection of iconic myths, as told in a modern vernacular akin to posts you would find on websites such as Tumblr, Twitter, and Facebook. These gods feel like average Joes, making their tales like episodes on a sitcom. It is a good read for those with a love for myths and a sense of humor to match. Read more

Review:My early impression is that the book is thorough, well researched and presents a very plausible hypothesis, but it seems a bit disjointed in that there could be clearer distinction between hard evidence and anecdotes. I may have a more detailed comment after further study Read more

Review:Reading Freeman's well written and interesting book will give you a great background and a deep historical understanding of how Christianity came to dominate the Western world for a thousand years, what that has cost in terms of intellectual degradation, and how, if the peoples of the West are to better their condition in the new century they must regain the intellectual confidence so characteristic of Greek civilization. This is a really good book. Read more