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specimenstoriesjr 's review for:
The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire
by Kyle Harper
Scholarly nonfiction is always so hard to rate. Is this examination of the impacts of disease and climate on the fall of the Roman empire interesting and important? Yes, very much so. Do I have enough detailed background on the minutia of Roman history to independently evaluate the strength of this examination? That's a big, fat no. It is a very good sign however that the footnotes and appendices are over a quarter of the pages in my copy, and that the author is a professor of classics, so I'll take him at his word. My studies of quaternary geology also jive with the trends described. Now, was this book a readable, well-written page turner? Yes, to the extent that this type of study can ever be, but of course that also means sections that are rather dry and that require concentration from the reader. This doesn't bother me, I knew what I was biting into. And it *was* full of delicious thoughts; my brain feels bigger for having consumed this book. I wish it had the life changing, revelatory quality and poetical prose, perfect-example-of-the-genre-ness I personally need in order to give this sort of text 5 stars. Alas, call me picky. I'll still be thinking about this for a long time and will be glad to have it on the shelf.