Thursday, August 23, 2012
[Book Review] THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE by Edward Gibbon
Wayne reviews THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE by Edward Gibbon (Modern Library)
For thousands of years historians have written countless books on Ancient Rome but perhaps the greatest narrative non-fiction book to chronicle the Eternal City and its people was written by a corpulent English politician named Edward Gibbon. In 1764 the 27-year-old Gibbon visited Rome and while there decided to write a history of the decline and fall of the Eternal City.
Published in six volumes between the years 1776 and 1788, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was the work of a “master storyteller” as well as a historian. As the scholar Hans Friedrich Mueller wrote: “throughout his work, Gibbon does more than simply tell good stories…. He looks for explanations, and he looks for those explanations in institutions, ethnography, economics geography and the heart. Gibbon looks for motivation in his human actors.”
G. Wayne Dowdy, Central Library
Labels: History, Nonfiction, Reviews by Wayne Dowdy
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