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In her international bestseller SPQR, Mary Beard told the thousand-year story of ancient Rome. Now she shines her spotlight on the emperors who ruled the Roman empire, from Julius Caesar (assassinated 44 BCE) to Alexander Severus (assassinated 235 CE). Emperor of Rome is not your usual chronological account of Roman rulers, one after another: the mad Caligula, the monster Nero, the philosopher Marcus Aurelius.
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Wasn't sure but won me over
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The Roman Republic was one of the most remarkable achievements in the history of civilization. After its founding in 509 BCE, the Romans refused to allow a single leader to seize control of the state and grab absolute power. The Roman commitment to cooperative government and peaceful transfers of power was unmatched in the history of the ancient world. But by the year 133 BCE, the republican system was unable to cope with the vast empire Rome now ruled.
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Interesting, albeit a bit dry
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What a dynamo!
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This foray into art history is a disappointment.
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Tracing the extraordinary trajectory of Julius Caesar's life, Adrian Goldsworthy covers not only the great Roman emperor's accomplishments as charismatic orator, conquering general, and powerful dictator but also lesser-known chapters. Ultimately, Goldsworthy realizes the full complexity of Caesar's character and shows why his political and military leadership continues to resonate some 2,000 years later.
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Destroyed by Vesuvius in 79 CE, the ruins of Pompeii offer the best evidence we have of life in the Roman Empire. But the eruptions are only part of the story. In The Fires of Vesuvius, acclaimed historian Mary Beard makes sense of the remains. She explores what kind of town it was - more like Calcutta or the Costa del Sol? - and what it can tell us about "ordinary" life there. From sex to politics, food to religion, slavery to literacy, Beard offers us the big picture even as she takes us close enough to the past to smell the bad breath....
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Emperor of Rome
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In her international bestseller SPQR, Mary Beard told the thousand-year story of ancient Rome. Now she shines her spotlight on the emperors who ruled the Roman empire, from Julius Caesar (assassinated 44 BCE) to Alexander Severus (assassinated 235 CE). Emperor of Rome is not your usual chronological account of Roman rulers, one after another: the mad Caligula, the monster Nero, the philosopher Marcus Aurelius.
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Wasn't sure but won me over
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Interesting, albeit a bit dry
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What a dynamo!
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What does the face of power look like? Who gets commemorated in art and why? And how do we react to statues of politicians we deplore? In this book - against a background of today’s “sculpture wars” - Mary Beard tells the story of how for more than two millennia portraits of the rich, powerful, and famous in the Western world have been shaped by the image of Roman emperors, especially the “Twelve Caesars”, from the ruthless Julius Caesar to the fly-torturing Domitian.
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This foray into art history is a disappointment.
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Tracing the extraordinary trajectory of Julius Caesar's life, Adrian Goldsworthy covers not only the great Roman emperor's accomplishments as charismatic orator, conquering general, and powerful dictator but also lesser-known chapters. Ultimately, Goldsworthy realizes the full complexity of Caesar's character and shows why his political and military leadership continues to resonate some 2,000 years later.
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Caesar and his times
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The Fires of Vesuvius
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Destroyed by Vesuvius in 79 CE, the ruins of Pompeii offer the best evidence we have of life in the Roman Empire. But the eruptions are only part of the story. In The Fires of Vesuvius, acclaimed historian Mary Beard makes sense of the remains. She explores what kind of town it was - more like Calcutta or the Costa del Sol? - and what it can tell us about "ordinary" life there. From sex to politics, food to religion, slavery to literacy, Beard offers us the big picture even as she takes us close enough to the past to smell the bad breath....
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Delightful Description of Life in Ancient Pompeii
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The Crusades is an authoritative, accessible single-volume history of the brutal struggle for the Holy Land in the Middle Ages. Thomas Asbridge - a renowned historian who writes with "maximum vividness" (Joan Acocella, The New Yorker) - covers the years 1095 to 1291 in this big, ambitious, listenable account of one of the most fascinating periods in history.
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Comprehensive
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Author and historian Tom Holland returns to his roots in Roman history and the audience he cultivated with Rubicon—his masterful, witty, brilliantly researched popular history of the fall of the Roman republic—with Dynasty, a luridly fascinating history of the reign of the first five Roman emperors. Dynasty continues Rubicon's story, opening where that book ended: with the murder of Julius Caesar. This is the period of the first and perhaps greatest Roman emperors. It's a colorful story of rule and ruination, from the rise of Augustus to the death of Nero.
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Accessible, enjoyable history
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A Distant Mirror
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The 14th century reflects two contradictory images: on the one hand, a glittering time of crusades and castles, cathedrals and chivalry, and the exquisitely decorated Books of Hours; and on the other, a time of ferocity and spiritual agony, a world of chaos and the plague.
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And you thought the twentieth century was rough...
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The History of the Ancient World
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This is the first volume in a bold new series that tells the stories of all peoples, connecting historical events from Europe to the Middle East to the far coast of China, while still giving weight to the characteristics of each country. Susan Wise Bauer provides both sweeping scope and vivid attention to the individual lives that give flesh to abstract assertions about human history. This narrative history employs the methods of "history from beneath" - literature, epic traditions, private letters, and accounts - to connect kings and leaders with the lives of those they ruled.
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An Historic Achievement
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This is the story of the greatest empire the world has ever known. Simon Baker charts the rise and fall of the world's first superpower, focusing on six momentous turning points that shaped Roman history. Welcome to Rome as you've never seen it before - awesome and splendid, gritty and squalid. From the conquest of the Mediterranean beginning in the third century BC to the destruction of the Roman Empire at the hands of barbarian invaders some seven centuries later, we discover the most critical episodes in Roman history.
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Clear and dramatic
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1177 B.C. (Revised and Updated)
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This audiobook narrated by acclaimed archaeologist and best-selling author Eric Cline offers a breathtaking account of how the collapse of an ancient civilized world ushered in the first Dark Ages.
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Look past the one-star reviews: this is an enlightening and engaging read.
- By Alonzo Nightjar on 03-07-22
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The Twelve Caesars
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The Twelve Caesars was written based on the information of eyewitnesses and public records. It conveys a very accurate picture of court life in Rome and contains some of the raciest and most salacious material to be found in all of ancient literature. The writing is clear, simple and easy to understand, and the numerous anecdotes of juicy scandal, bitter court intrigue, and murderous brigandage easily hold their own against the most spirited content of today's tabloids.
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A pleasure to read...
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By: Suetonius
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The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
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- Unabridged
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Here in a single volume is the entire, unabridged recording of Gibbon's masterpiece. Beginning in the second century A.D. at the apex of the Pax Romana, Gibbon traces the arc of decline and complete destruction through the centuries across Europe and the Mediterranean. It is a thrilling and cautionary tale of splendor and ruin, of faith and hubris, and of civilization and barbarism. Follow along as Christianity overcomes paganism... before itself coming under intense pressure from Islam.
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Masterpiece - Best Audiobook I’ve Listened To
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Persian Fire
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In the fifth century BC, a global superpower was determined to bring truth and order to what it regarded as two terrorist states. The superpower was Persia, incomparably rich in ambition, gold, and men. The terrorist states were Athens and Sparta, eccentric cities in a poor and mountainous backwater: Greece. The story of how their citizens took on the Great King of Persia, and thereby saved not only themselves, but Western civilization as well, is as heart-stopping and fateful as any episode in history.
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Engaging
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Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945
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Almost a decade in the making, this much-anticipated grand history of postwar Europe from one of the world’s most esteemed historians and intellectuals is a singular achievement. Postwar is the first modern history that covers all of Europe, both east and west, drawing on research in six languages to sweep readers through 34 nations and 60 years of political and cultural change—all in one integrated, enthralling narrative.
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Great book, but not terrific listening
- By History on 10-18-11
By: Tony Judt
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The Other Side of History: Daily Life in the Ancient World
- By: Robert Garland, The Great Courses
- Narrated by: Robert Garland
- Length: 24 hrs and 28 mins
- Original Recording
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Look beyond the abstract dates and figures, kings and queens, and battles and wars that make up so many historical accounts. Over the course of 48 richly detailed lectures, Professor Garland covers the breadth and depth of human history from the perspective of the so-called ordinary people, from its earliest beginnings through the Middle Ages.
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Tantalizing time trip
- By Mark on 08-21-13
By: Robert Garland, and others
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Alexander the Great
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- By: Paul Cartledge
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- Length: 9 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Paul Cartledge, one of the world's foremost scholars of ancient Greece, illuminates the brief but iconic life of Alexander (356-323 B.C.), king of Macedon, conqueror of the Persian Empire, and founder of a new world order. Alexander's legacy has had a major impact on military tacticians, scholars, statesmen, adventurers, authors, and filmmakers.
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NOT a Chronology of Alexander’s Life
- By Blane Richoux on 12-30-20
By: Paul Cartledge
Publisher's summary
A sweeping, revisionist history of the Roman Empire from one of our foremost classicists.
Ancient Rome was an imposing city even by modern standards, a sprawling imperial metropolis of more than a million inhabitants, a "mixture of luxury and filth, liberty and exploitation, civic pride and murderous civil war" that served as the seat of power for an empire that spanned from Spain to Syria. Yet how did all this emerge from what was once an insignificant village in central Italy?
In SPQR, world-renowned classicist Mary Beard narrates the unprecedented rise of a civilization that even 2,000 years later still shapes many of our most fundamental assumptions about power, citizenship, responsibility, political violence, empire, luxury, and beauty. From the foundational myth of Romulus and Remus to 212 CE, nearly a thousand years later, when the emperor Caracalla gave Roman citizenship to every free inhabitant of the empire, SPQR (the abbreviation of "The Senate and People of Rome") not just examines how we think of ancient Rome but challenges the comfortable historical perspectives that have existed for centuries by exploring how the Romans thought of themselves: how they challenged the idea of imperial rule, how they responded to terrorism and revolution, and how they invented a new idea of citizenship and nation.
Opening the audiobook in 63 BCE with the famous clash between the populist aristocrat Catiline and Cicero, the renowned politician and orator, Beard animates this "terrorist conspiracy", which was aimed at the very heart of the republic, demonstrating how this singular event would presage the struggle between democracy and autocracy that would come to define much of Rome's subsequent history. Illustrating how a classical democracy yielded to a self-confident and self-critical empire, SPQR reintroduces us, though in a wholly different way, to famous and familiar characters.
Featured Article: The 20 Best History Audiobooks You Never Heard in School
While history is by definition the study of the past, no subject tells us more about the present, or is as exciting to follow in contemporary times. The range of subgenres within history writing is huge. Some authors cover a massive scope, while others zoom in to examine tiny, overlooked elements in a new way. Unlike your history class of old, these selections don’t demand memorization of names and dates. Read on for the best in our catalog.
What listeners say about SPQR
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- Gino
- 12-27-15
Very well done
Very well thought out explanation of the history of Rome through the initial centuries of the common era .
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3 people found this helpful
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- R. J Kaucher
- 08-06-16
An interesting and amazing book
My only complaint is that it was too short. I'd have listened to another two hours gladly.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Ken Kleinman
- 09-14-19
really could have used an audio editor
Fascinating, even with knowledge of Roman history. Reader misses emphasis in some sentences, other errors.
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2 people found this helpful
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- eyeland
- 04-15-16
Illuminating
The book engaged my imagination and made me see in my mind the streets and life in ancient Rome
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2 people found this helpful
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- Bella Ciao
- 10-12-16
Delightful
This book is so fun. Beard makes this time vivid and exciting. I got a good sense of how the inclusiveness and assimulation worked to build a great economic dynamo.
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2 people found this helpful
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- J. R. Valery
- 09-04-16
Very good book
Very well written and researched, and very well read, except for the pronunciation of Latin words and phrases, which is absolutely atrocious.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Ken
- 07-15-17
Good History Lost in Poor Narration
The approach to the study of first millennial Rome was creative and interesting. Unfortunately, I found the performance to greatly diminish my overall enjoyment of the book. The dynamics of the recording are not good, sometimes so soft as to make it impossible to decipher what is being said. And I frequently found Ms. Nash's accent to be difficult to understand, which compounded the problem. I was so looking forward to hearing this; what a disappointment.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Victoria Smith
- 09-01-19
Not what I was looking for, but not bad
I wanted more information about the Caesars particularly. Not that this didn’t have that, but it was much more about the politics and less about the Emperors. Kinda felt about this as I did A Feast for Crows; I understand why it’s important and good to know, but not as interesting as the battle and adventure filled books . I learned a lot, but found it textbookish and mainly covered the first 700 years of Rome. That was interesting, but as I said, not the most intriguing years for me. Still a great and informative read.
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- Paul
- 05-25-16
Crassusnextusumbelicusfortuitous Us
This was a very interesting look at ancient Rome but in audible form it comes up a bit short. The narrator is not the author but let's forgive that because narrator does a great job. But how many Latin/Roman names can you keep straight. There's another one coming at you every 30 seconds. I haven't seen the printed version of this but I wonder if it contains pictures or statues of some of these guys (not much herstory(sic) here). The book was most interesting when the timeline intersected something I know at least a little: the assassination of Julius Caeser, the story from "I, Claudius", that's about it.
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- Nicholas
- 05-23-17
In-depth look at the Roman World
Not exactly an "easy" listen and not a book I'd recommend for a first time student of the Roman world and culture. However, it's very well researched and includes vast quotes and sources of authentic Roman era writing and clips of period speeches. She explores areas often overlooked in over Roman histories.
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1 person found this helpful