Clear, concise, well-researched and reasonable—a sensible, healthful lunch rather than a Roman banquet.
On balance, the 44-year reign of Caesar Augustus (63 b.c.–a.d. 14) had positive effects on Rome and its population. Unless . . .
Unless, of course, you were a slave, a woman, a resident of some distant tribe Rome wished to “civilize,” a political rival or a member of any other group penned in by the Pax Romana. Everitt has written elsewhere about notable Romans (Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome’s Greatest Politician, 2002), and here he offers a balanced appraisal of Augustus, known earlier in his life as “Gaius,” then “Octavian.” Although reliable and unbiased documentary evidence for a biography of Augustus is scant, Everitt carefully sifts through what does exist and lets us know when he’s speculating, when he’s inferring. Some of the great names from ancient history appear in these pages: Julius Caesar, Cleopatra, Marc Antony, Horace, Virgil. We are reminded of the details about Caesar’s relations with Cleopatra, the Ides of March, Antony’s various “alliances” with Cleopatra (Everitt doubts the suicide-with-an-asp story), and readers confused by HBO’s Rome or by the Roman plays of Shakespeare and Shaw will find here the balm of knowledge. The author follows Augustus from his fortunate birth (his father was a senator; his great-uncle, Julius Caesar) through his youth and education, his uncertain trials in battle (he seemed always to fall ill when swords began clanging), his increasing confidence and political savvy, his lifelong and quite complementary friendship with Agrippa, his long rivalry with Antony, his marriage to Livia, his emergence as princeps, his rule, his aging, his disappointments and losses, his death. Everitt periodically (and generally unobtrusively) offers mini-seminars on Roman food, clothing, religion, bathing, sexual mores, coming-of-age rituals (including a young man’s first shave—the deposito barbae). Although the author declines to dwell on ancient parallels with our own age, readers will notice many, including, for example, the determination of rulers to silence dissent during a military crisis.
Clear, concise, well-researched and reasonable—a sensible, healthful lunch rather than a Roman banquet.Pub Date: Oct. 24, 2006
ISBN: 1-4000-6128-8
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
