This book is as much a manifesto as a work of history. The manifesto is timely, important, and utterly persuasive. The history is a bit more complicated, but nevertheless offers an eloquent explanation of much that happened in the long history of Rome and its empire. Watts follows a long series of modern thinkers in […]
Addis offers a dark view of Rome’s history, in which historical change comes about not through high-minded actions or progress, but rather through brutality, ruthlessness, and accident. This is a healthful antidote to the triumphalist histories, acclaiming the expansion of the Roman Empire, the rise of Christianity, Italian nationalism, or Western civilization, of which the city of Rome has sometimes been the center.
The Common Reader, a publication of Washington University in St. Louis, offers the best in reviews, articles and creative non-fiction engaging the essential debates and issues of our time.
Dying is something we all do. Saints, film stars, Olympic athletes, con artists. I feel calmer every time another cool friend pulls it off; if all these smart, funny people have managed to die, could it be so awful to share their fate? Yet much of what we call culture is created to deny death, or at least distract us from it.
