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TEN CAESARS

ROMAN EMPERORS FROM AUGUSTUS TO CONSTANTINE

Fresh documentary evidence on these times rarely turns up to add to the skimpy surviving chronicles (by Pliny, Tacitus,...

A set of lively biographies of the 10 best-known emperors of Rome.

Few educated readers respect many of Hollywood’s grandiose versions of events (though HBO’s series, Rome, did better), so history buffs will not wince to read about the cruelty, murder, betrayal, and arrogance of even highly regarded emperors. Rocking no boats, Strauss (History and Classics/Cornell Univ.; The Death of Caesar: The Story of History's Most Famous Assassination, 2015, etc.), who has written numerous useful popular books on the classical period, agrees that the ancient Republic was moribund when Julius Caesar delivered the coup de grace. But it took a vicious 20-year civil war before his grand-nephew took power in 27 B.C.E. and proclaimed the restoration of the old Roman Republic; then he gradually assumed the mantel of emperor as Augustus. Historians and contemporaries agree that he did a solid job as emperor, and he was widely mourned at his death. Few historians but Strauss admire his dour successor, Tiberius, who, although a general, avoided war and continued the nearly 200 years of Pax Romana. The author delivers short accounts of all emperors during these years, expanding on the not-always-awful Nero and the admirable Vespasian, Trajan, Hadrian, and ending with Marcus Aurelius, who closed out Rome’s golden years. Strauss skims over the disastrous century that followed before concentrating on Diocletian and Constantine, who stabilized the empire mostly through persistent warfare but also reorganized the administration, largely abandoning the city of Rome and the western realm, which vanished a century later, leaving the wealthier eastern Byzantine empire to continue for more than another 1,000 years.

Fresh documentary evidence on these times rarely turns up to add to the skimpy surviving chronicles (by Pliny, Tacitus, Cassius Dio, Suetonius et al.), so popular histories have little new ground to break. They must be read for pleasure, and this one delivers good value.

Pub Date: March 5, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-4516-6883-4

Page Count: 416

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: Dec. 3, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2019

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NIGHT

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. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

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

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

Well-told and admonitory.

Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

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