What are we reading?

[Tripoli]

Just finished "SPQR" by Mary Beard.

https://www.amazon.com/SPQR-History-Ancient-Mary-Beard/dp/0871404230/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1671682080&sr=8-1

If you have watched any recent BBC documentaries on Rome, you have probably seen Mary Beard. She is pretty much the resident Rome specialist there.

The book is a very good social, political and cultural history of Rome from the beginning until about 200 AD. My reading on Rome has mostly been military, so SPQR filled in many gaps. 

I enjoyed SPQR and recommend it. It is an enjoyable read.

A few minor warts...or maybe better to say features. SPQR takes a very broad brush when it comes to military matters. Also, the author follows more of a subject based organization, than timeline based. So there is a one chapter discussion of transition from one emperor to another that covers a broad swath of time for example. The result is that sometimes SPQR jumps around time-line wise.

To make up for SPQR's lack of military content, and I found myself re-reading

"In the Name of Rome" by Adrian Goldsworthy

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0297846663/ref=ox_sc_saved_title_1?smid=A1QWS0M2H4O2M0&psc=1

I am about a 1/3 of the way through. Just finished the section on Quintus Sertorius (a rebel Roman general) who fought a kind of guerrilla war against Pompei in Spain. Sertorius regularly beat the snot out of Pompei, but lost in the end. Now the book is moving to Pompei himself.

I have discussed this book before. So all I will say is that it is an excellent survey of the military history of Rome through the exploits of 16 of its generals. Highly recommend it.

AZTank: If you are interested in Roman military matters, You may be interested in Luttwak's "The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire" https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/10324/grand-strategy-roman-empire    It is a good analysis by an expert on strategy.

[ArizonaTank]

Just finished "SPQR" by Mary Beard.

https://www.amazon.com/SPQR-History-Ancient-Mary-Beard/dp/0871404230/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1671682080&sr=8-1

If you have watched any recent BBC documentaries on Rome, you have probably seen Mary Beard. She is pretty much the resident Rome specialist there.

The book is a very good social, political and cultural history of Rome from the beginning until about 200 AD. My reading on Rome has mostly been military, so SPQR filled in many gaps. 

I enjoyed SPQR and recommend it. It is an enjoyable read.

A few minor warts...or maybe better to say features. SPQR takes a very broad brush when it comes to military matters. Also, the author follows more of a subject based organization, than timeline based. So there is a one chapter discussion of transition from one emperor to another that covers a broad swath of time for example. The result is that sometimes SPQR jumps around time-line wise.

To make up for SPQR's lack of military content, and I found myself re-reading

"In the Name of Rome" by Adrian Goldsworthy

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0297846663/ref=ox_sc_saved_title_1?smid=A1QWS0M2H4O2M0&psc=1

I am about a 1/3 of the way through. Just finished the section on Quintus Sertorius (a rebel Roman general) who fought a kind of guerrilla war against Pompei in Spain. Sertorius regularly beat the snot out of Pompei, but lost in the end. Now the book is moving to Pompei himself.

I have discussed this book before. So all I will say is that it is an excellent survey of the military history of Rome through the exploits of 16 of its generals. Highly recommend it.

AZTank: If you are interested in Roman military matters, You may be interested in Luttwak's "The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire" https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/10324/grand-strategy-roman-empire    It is a good analysis by an expert on strategy.

Thanks for the suggestion. Copy on order.

[Victor]

SPQR is a pretty good launchpad to get into general Roman history but Beard is not big on military stuff. She seems to enjoy the 'daily life' type of history much more and knows more about Roman toilets than I wanted to know!

I'd stay away from Goldsworthy with a 10 foot pole though. I got burned by buying his 'The Complete Roman Army' and have a grudge since. He's the darling of Roman military history because his books are easy to read and everyone recommends him but his stuff barely scratches the surface and presents mostly the static view of the Roman military as it was during the Augustan age that Hollywood puts out.

I don't think you'd gain too much reading Goldsworthy versus reading wikipedia, as nasty as that sounds.

I much prefer Michael J Taylor for Roman military history. He's only got one book, but you can read his many articles on academia.edu.

[Gusington]

I agree with you on The Complete Roman Army by Goldsworthy...I too got burned and I forgot about that. BUT...that book came out a while ago and he has put out many very good titles since then, especially his fiction set in Britannia.

[ArizonaTank]

I'd stay away from Goldsworthy with a 10 foot pole though. I got burned by buying his 'The Complete Roman Army' and have a grudge since. He's the darling of Roman military history because his books are easy to read and everyone recommends him but his stuff barely scratches the surface and presents mostly the static view of the Roman military as it was during the Augustan age that Hollywood puts out.

I don't think you'd gain too much reading Goldsworthy versus reading wikipedia, as nasty as that sounds.

I much prefer Michael J Taylor for Roman military history. He's only got one book, but you can read his many articles on academia.edu.

I'll take a look at Taylor.

I have only read "In the Name of Rome" by Goldsworthy and I am enjoying it. It has a good level of detail for me. 

[Groggy]

I would recommend Mike Duncan's book The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34184069-the-storm-before-the-storm

I would also recommend giving a listen to his epic award-winning podcast series The History of Rome. Really good stuff.

https://www.podcastrepublic.net/podcast/261654474

[Tripoli]

I would recommend Mike Duncan's book The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34184069-the-storm-before-the-storm

I would also recommend giving a listen to his epic award-winning podcast series The History of Rome. Really good stuff.

https://www.podcastrepublic.net/podcast/261654474

Duncan's podcast is really good, summarizing the history of Rome in nice, bit sized chunks.  If you are doing a long car drive, and have an understanding wife, it is a good way to pass the time.

[Victor]

If you guys have any specific themes or periods you're interested in, I can make some more concrete Roman book recommendations.

Taylor for example is great for administrative stuff but he focuses on the Polybian/Marian periods. His book's thesis is that Rome beat out all other contenders for the top spot because it had the best tradeoff between army cost and effectiveness. His insights into how Rome leveraged their Italian allies to double their army almost for free would make a great book just by itself.

Generally historians divide the Roman army into periods or eras because as you can imagine, it changed a lot over time.

Servian/Kingdom: Heavy Greek influence, basically a hoplite army with few Italian tweaks. This is when Rome was still trying to expand from a single city.

Camillan: When Rome was still unifying Italy. Still some hoplites but now a lot of nuance.

Polybian: The army system that conquered the ancient world, beat Hannibal, Macedonia etc but never gets any credit. Still conscripts, funny enough!

Marian: What we'd start to recognize as a modern, professional army. Classic heavy infantry that Caesar and others would take for a spin.

Augustan: What everyone thinks of when they think Roman army. Sometimes lumped together with Marian, but there are a lot of differences.

Diocletian/Late: The old system reformed, this one looks the most like a military today IMHO. One can almost equate the branches into a proto National Guard/Regular/Special Forces kind of division. Very misunderstood period, lots of stereotypes about barbarians/decline. Nobody roots for the losers!

Eastern Roman/Byzantine: Everything after the West collapsed, this one has a ton of eras too but nobody cares much beyond Justinian/Belisarius usually.

If you have any specific requests, don't be shy, there's books for (almost) everything!

Edit: I should also say A Companion to the Roman Army by Paul Erdkamp does an overview of all of these periods, but it's not a traditional book. More like a series of articles by a lot of different historians each covering their period and focusing on a theme they care about. So in the Late period section for example there's an article about the role that the army played in imperial propaganda, another about literacy amongst the soldiers, etc.

[Gusington]

I care beyond Justinian/Belisarius!!

[Jarhead0331]

I recently picked up an old used copy of Lejeune, the Naval Institute's biography of Lt. Gen. John Lejeune, written by Merrill Bartlett. The interesting part is that I noticed a note in the book signed by the author. It is addressed to "Mrs. Prescott Bush, Jr." and is dated "31 July 2000, Washington, DC".

Mrs. Prescott Bush, Jr. must be Elizabeth Kauffman Bush, who was the wife of Prescott Bush, Jr.  Prescott was the older brother of President George H. W. Bush and the uncle of President George W. Bush. Her father was Vice Admiral James Kauffman and her brother was Rear Admiral Draper Kauffman, who is widely regarded as the ultimate frogman and first Navy Seal.

I love finding real life history like this in my used books.

[Sir Slash]

 O0  Could be worth some cash?

[Jarhead0331]

O0  Could be worth some cash?

i wouldn't expect there to be much cash value to it, but certainly tremendous value of a historical nature.

[Gusington]

Now reading The Enemy at the Gate: Habsburgs, Ottomans, and the Battle for Europe - https://amzn.to/3GcNR6a

[ArizonaTank]

Just finished The General and the Genius by James Kunetka. A good project account of the building of the atomic bombs in WWII. While the book does cover bios and personalities, it does not take too deep of a dive into them. Instead the book covers the technical challenges, design problems, organization, logistics and complexity of the Manhattan project. It was exactly what I was looking for.

https://www.amazon.com/General-Genius-World-War-Collection/dp/1684513596/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2K1Z350KWSJU1&keywords=the+general+and+the+genius&qid=1673218990&qu=eyJxc2MiOiIxLjk3IiwicXNhIjoiMS43OSIsInFzcCI6IjEuODQifQ%3D%3D&sprefix=the+general+and+%2Caps%2C133&sr=8-1

[Gusington]

About to begin: Drone Visions - A Brief Cyberpunk History of Killing Machines by Naief Yehya.

https://amzn.to/3CJKT79