frankie

Grave's turns the lives of the first three empires of the Roman Empire into a soap opera. The book follows historical facts, but there are plenty of missing facts from the record that allows Graves to turn the book into a back door view of these people lives.

I would not read the book for historical correctness, but in general does follow what is known.

The reading is great, if you like voices from different characters, but they all have British accents.

Love history but this book is too philosophical to satisfy my tastes. Cahill writes extensive passages about the works of some ancient writers, but the argument he tries to make get lost.

I thought this would be a book I'd rave about. You almost need cliff notes to understand what Cahill is means. He use Latin, Greek, Gallic to no effect. He also dives into the Toine which has about as much meaning to me as Beowulf.

That said there are sections of the book I found intriguing but many chapters that could serve as melatonin.

Okay. Many words not pronounced as American would. Many names of the ancient writes are not what Americans would recognize due to pronunciation.

All

No. The story is too long and much of the information is repeated several times.More than 4-hours into the book the author still has not started the story of the Great Influenza. Some of the background information is pertinent to the story but much is not. Some of the book seems to being making an argumentative case for or against certain characters. Usually a balanced approach is taken by historian to let the read decide who is GREAT.

The basic story is a good one. Look for an abridged version as that would cut out the needed parts of the story.