Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town by Amazonundefined

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Price last update: 08/03/2024

Description

The headings of Mary Beard's notes give a taste of this astonishing book: Bad Breath, Intestinal Parasites, Performing Monkeys, One-way Streets, Kosher Food, Water Shortages. The Temple of Isis serves to bring in multiculturalism. The House of the Menander tells how a house worked. At the Suburban Baths we go from communal bathing to hygiene to erotica. 154 writing tablets from the House of Caecilius Jucundus detail the accounts of its owner. A fast-food joint on the Via dell' Abbondanza introduces food and drink and diets and street life. These are just a few of the strands that make up an extraordinary and involving portrait of an ancient town, its life and its continuing re-discovery, by Britain's leading classicist.
Recenzja
How exciting to have this perfect vademecum - another word for a guidebook, as all you Latin scholars will know, or literally, a "go-with-me". -- Harry Mount
Independent on Sunday
[a] brilliant portrait of "the life of a Roman town"... [a] wonderful book. -- James McConnachie
Sunday Times
Beard's cheerful scepticism makes her Pompeii more intriguing, more believable, than any version I have read. -- Christian Tyler
FT
A vivid demonstration that sceptical scholarship can provide as gripping a read as sensationalism... a learned and fascinating book. -- Tom Holland
Guardian
Published On: 2008-09-20Such verve and such mesmerising detail...A work of punctilious and scholarly devotion. -- Ian Thomson
Evening Standard
Published On: 2008-09-22A vivid and engaging portrait of this enigmatic and historically important town -- Clover Stroud
Sunday Telegraph
Published On: 2008-09-14Fresh and original, Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town makes history come alive
Daily Express
Dynamically, wittily and authoritatively brings the ancient world to life -- Simon Sebag Montefiore
Standard
Published On: 2008-11-17The book begins in darkness with desperate fugitives attempting to outrun the deadly flow. It ends with a practical guide to viewing the site, right down to tipping the lavatory attendants ... It is an odd justaposition, but an inspired one. Few could resist a visit having read Mary Beard's compelling account. -- Elizabeth Speller
Independent
Published On: 2008-10-03What Mary Beard , one of the most distinguished Roman historians in the English-speaking world, has given us here is a delightfully readable account ... [She] has the facility for bringing all [the] characters to life ...without sacrificing scholarly accuarcy. -- John Dillon
Irish Times
Published On: 2008-09-20Her intelligence is ever alert, probing, questioning accepted stereotypes. She has the scepticism proper to the true historian. She repeatedly offers pithy and illuminating judgements. ... This is a fascinating book. -- Alan Massie
Literary Review
Published On: 2008-10-10I'm tempted to say if you read one book of history this year it should be Pompeii. Not just because it is written with a rare mixture of scrupulous scholarship and a relaxed conversational narrative drive - Beard seems actually to like her readers, which is rare among serious scholars - but becuase Pompeii itself matters. -- Michael Bywater
New Statesman
Published On: 2008-09-22My advice? Buy this book before you go - all trips to Pompeii, armchair or actual, will be inordinately enhanced. -- Bettany Hughes
Times
Published On: 2008-10-18A forensic adventure through the back alleys and the mansions of a dead city, checking the beds, the looms, the loos, what time the carts rolled in the streets, what was for breakfast and the politics going down in the Forum ... a proper detcitive story ... a wonder -- Michael Pye
Scotsman
Published On: 2008-09-20She makes the dead of Pompeii spring to life. -- Raymond Carr
Spectator
Published On: 2008-09-13This is ancient history as it should be written and the invaluable companion to any trip to Pompeii. -- Giles Foden
Conde Nast Traveller
Published On: 2008-10-04Much of what you think you know about Pompeii may turn out, on reading this eye-opening book, to be wrong. ...Beard always wears her learning lightly, and in this outstanding book she has excelled herself ...gripping -- Andrew Holgate
Sunday Times (Christmas Books Roundup)
Published On: 2008-11-30Mary Beard is a wonderful and amusing companion and explainer. If you ever go to Pompeii, read this first. -- Boris Johnson
Irish Mail on Sunday
Published On: 2009-01-04
O autorze
Mary Beard is one of the most original and best-known classicists working today. She is Professor of Classics at Newnham College, Cambridge, and the Classics editor of the
TLS
. She is a fellow of the British Academy and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her books include the Wolfson Prize-winning
Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town
(2008) and the best-selling
SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome
(2015). Her popular
TLS
blog has been collected in the books
It's a Don's Life
and
All in a Don's Day
. Her latest book is
Women & Power: A Manifesto
(2017).