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bosquedemel 's review for:
SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome
by Mary Beard
informative
I found this really enjoyable.
The book has a good structure and the chapters are broken up in shorter sections which maintain a good pacing throughout. Beard's writing style is engaging, very accessible and sometimes witty in a dry manner. It's also somewhat dispassionate. She writes with the confidence of an expert but not one with a thesis to prove or with a particular bias towards anything. It's basically the tone of a professor giving a lecture, which, for an introductory book, is fitting.
I am no expert in Ancient Rome so others who have more knowledge would probably find flaws here that I cannot, but the fact that this is a 600-page book that covers almost 1000 years of history is obviously not the most detailed analysis ever. It's a good introduction, though, and it made me want to learn more.
The book has a good structure and the chapters are broken up in shorter sections which maintain a good pacing throughout. Beard's writing style is engaging, very accessible and sometimes witty in a dry manner. It's also somewhat dispassionate. She writes with the confidence of an expert but not one with a thesis to prove or with a particular bias towards anything. It's basically the tone of a professor giving a lecture, which, for an introductory book, is fitting.
I am no expert in Ancient Rome so others who have more knowledge would probably find flaws here that I cannot, but the fact that this is a 600-page book that covers almost 1000 years of history is obviously not the most detailed analysis ever. It's a good introduction, though, and it made me want to learn more.