How Rome Fell: Death of a Superpower,   ISBN:9780300137194

Customer Rating: 

One would think that the decline of the ancient era's greatest empire would be a thrilling story. The fall of Rome has all the essential ingredients, palace intrigue, international conflict, civil war, barbarian invasions, the rise of Christianity, and the occurrence of a charismatic emperor now and then. But this book just feels flat and despite its considerable heft, incomplete. More than anything else, How Rome Fell is a military history and it's easy to see how a military perspective is absolutely central to the examination of this historical epoch, but there must be more to it just a constant stream of battles led by emperors whose names fly by with such abandon as to be utterly without consequence. But even within its military context the author leaves several key questions unanswered. For example, why were the legions apparently populated primarily by barbarians in the last 100 years of the Empire. Where were the Romans? Reading this out loud, with its dizzying explosions of newly anointed emperors only to have them murdered in the next moment began taking on a hilarious absurdity. The reader gets so little feel of what it would be like living in this era. The author seems very removed from his subject matter, despite his obvious vast wealth of knowledge. I suspect that this book would have been a lot more interesting if there was somewhat less seemingly irrelevant detail and a lot more depth of analysis. Frankly, it seems to be written by a rather pedestrian mind. The conclusion is so dull and lacking in depth that it astounded this reader given the electrifying nature of the subject matter.
To give the book the credit it is due, I did learn just how different the decline of Rome is from the seeming decline of the American Empire, although an argument could be made that military over-extension explains the fall of both entities. The author also notes how different the Roman Empire was from the British Empire of the 18-19th centuries, in that Romans never faced internal nationalistic independence movement like Great Britain. Despite its ultimate collapse, people seemed very content living under Roman rule and resisted the attempts to weaken the Empire.
With its several critical weaknesses, this is still an amazing time in the human story. The ability of Roman government to sustain such levels of internal contentment might provide a lesson for our own time.
Liberation from the Lie: Cutting the Roots of Fear Once and for All

Customer Rating: 

This book was too long and very dry and boring at times.The myriad of people and events at times were confusing and hard to follow.

Customer Rating: 

I bought this book after a recommendation from Amazon. Last time.

Verbose, way too lengthy for what it says. After all that, I am not sure that he makes his point (that internal civil fights were the cause for the fall). Don't waste your money.

Customer Rating: 

One of the unresolved questions still keeping historians at work concerns the fall of the Roman Empire.So far hundreds of books and articles discussed and scrutinized every detail of the Empire's demise and each one has come up with different answers.Indeed,such a topic is barely possible to handle for one single historian.One must be in an extremely good command of primary and secondary sources and if he or she wants to have a wide audience, he or she must also be able to write in a very lively style, since such a topic could become boring in a matter of seconds if the style of writing is dry and contains only an endless number of facts.
However, in the case of Mr. Goldsworthy's case, this is not the case.Not only does he have a brilliant command of his sources ,but he has also the ability to keep the reader's interest alive along 448 pages,the length of the text.What is original about this book concerns his conclusions and they are very simple: the real reason for the fall and demise of the Roman Empire had to do with the endless number of civil wars which started maily in 217 AD and proved to be fatal for the Empire which expired in the fifth century. Each conflict has sapped the empire's energy.Corruption was rampant and just to illustrate, one emperor, Elagabalus,had nominated his governors on the merit of the size of their respective penises.One cannot escape the famous -and cited-sentence written by Gibbon in the 18th century who proclaimed that "the story of the Empire's ruin is simple and obvious;and instead of inquiring why the Roman empire was destroyed,we should rather be surprised that it lasted so long".
In addition, the author has managed to examine almost every aspect of the Roman life under the tens-perhaps-hundreds- of emperors.The period between the second and fifth century was one of extreme economic crises, religious strife, plagues and endless wars.There was a succession of earthquakes in the fifth century which spread devastation throughout the Eastern Empire.Consider this:in sixty years there were more than sixty emperors! Sometimes one brother would kill the other in order to ascend to the throne.This book also examines at length the relations between the Empire and the Sassanid Persians.
Towards the end,Mr.Goldsworthy warns us about making analogies with the Romans when talking about the demise of other Empires or superpowers, such as the USA.For example, he writes(on p.419) that "theses days,countries and governments do not face enemies likely to overthrow them by military force."And then(p.421):"Like the Romans,the bodies involved are usually just too big to come to immediate and final collapse". When speaking about the collapse of superpowers,such as the USA,one should be extremely careful in pronouncing their downfall, because such a process in not only uncertain, but also extremely slow and takes a very long time.However, no superpower is guaranteed its supremacy and this is true of modern America as well as it was of Rome.
In short, this opus will be a delight to read for those who want an informative , entertaining and interesting read about a fascinating and controversial topic-all this in less than 500 pages.

Customer Rating: 

I cannot comment on the scholarship here, but as a member of the general public with an interest in this period, I can say that I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I was looking for some insight to the period from late antiquity to early medieval, and that is just what is delivered here. The coverage is from the death of Marcus Aurelius in 180 and the beginnings of the Crisis of the Third Century, through the last grasp of the East for the West by Justinian and Belisarius in the middle of the 6th century.

Some of the questions that I had that were covered include; was the fall of the West sudden or gradual? Was it due to primarily external or internal pressures? Who were the "barbarians", were they really all that barbarian and what was their relationship with the Romans through this period? What do we know about the life of the general population at this time and how did life change for them? This was all covered, and in very readable prose. I'm sure that I will be going back and rereading portions of it into the future.

This was my first purchased Kindle book (6-inch Kindle-II) and I generally enjoyed the experience. My only gripe is that the maps in this book did not "zoom" and on the 6-inch screen they were all but unreadable. I imagine that the 9-inch Kindle would be much better for this (or a big magnifying glass, but the maps REALLY should be zoom-able and that is why a 4 rather than a 5.