Mike Duncan

This was a fast paced and well written account of the crucial decades leading up to the end of the Roman Republic. To someone who both had studied and has a particular interest in this area of history, most of the content was already quite familiar, but Duncan does a very good job at taking the complex political, social and economic issues from the period and tying them together into a cohesive ‘storyline’. I felt that the underpinning of the entire narrative with the collapse of the mos show more maiorum and the interweaving of relevant references to digestible excerpts of ancient sources was especially well done. There was unavoidably some simplification of certain events and relationships, and I did feel the treatment of certain elements was a little bit dated, such as the ‘optimates’ and ‘populares’ division. Overall though, a solid telling of some of the most underrated years of Roman Republican history, and an enjoyable read. show less

Back in its prime, I probably enjoyed Mike Duncan's blogging and pod-casting about the sweep of Roman history as much as anyone, so it was just a matter of time before I got to this book.

Having looked at other reviews on this work, yes, it is a little too jocular at times (a tone that probably goes better with a podcast). It's also probably inevitable that contemporary American political troubles are going to be invoked when speaking of Roman political conflict, whether justified or not. show more However, Duncan has really managed to fill a gap in popular discourse with his history of the conflict between the populist and the aristocratic political factions of Roman politics, and why they turned so destructive. You could do worse in terms of an introduction to the state of play before the terminal phase of the Roman Republic.

Also, PublicAffairs, or its printer, really needs to get better editing software. show less

There are basically three things that I think about when reading history: is it accurate, how does the author interpret what was going on, and how good is the author at telling the story? And I admit that I rarely know a period of history well enough to judge the first two well. Still, from what I do know of this era, Duncan is getting the facts right—I'm always amazed at how much we know about a period over 2,000 years ago. And he's fairly restrained on offering interpretations, being the show more most direct in the author's note. That leaves the storytelling aspect, and Duncan is excellent at this. I knew perfectly well what was going to happen to the Gracchi brothers and how Marius and Sulla came to clash, and yet I was still eagerly turning pages to read more. The timeline at the beginning is quite helpful, although towards the end, I wished I also had a "cast of characters" to refer to (Roman names sound a lot alike after a while, especially when you're talking about a lot of Romans. Although footnotes like "Uncle of THE Julius Caesar" and "The father of THE Marcus Crassus" helped.) If you're interested in reading some Roman history that isn't about Caesar, Augustus, Mark Antony, etc., this would be a fine choice. show less

An excellent, highly accessible biography of Lafayette. The arc of his life is an incredible story - participating in several revolutions, languishing in prison for years, and coming out again. Duncan writes in an engaging manner. In reading the acknowledgments, I was impressed to learn that the author moved to France for several years (and worked at learning French) to research the book. I've previouly read several biographies of leading people of the era (i.e. Hamilton, Napoleon, Jefferson show more and Washington) and found this book added plenty of interesting new detail and texture to my understanding of the age of revolution. show less