SPQR (Beard) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
[A] sprawling but humane volume that examines nearly 1,000 years in the early history of that teeming city and empire…[Beard] is a debunker and a complicatof...and charming company. In SPQR she pulls off the difficult feat of deliberating at length on the largest intellectual and moral issues her subject presents (liberty, beauty, citizenship, power) while maintaining an intimate tone.... Ms. Beard's prose is never mandarin, yet she treats her readers like peers. She pulls us into the faculty lounge and remarks about debates that can make or end academic careers.... You come to Ms. Beard's books to meet her as much as her subjects. They are idiosyncratic and offbeat, which is to say, pleasingly hers.
Dwight Garner - New York Times


In SPQR, her wonderful concise history, Mary Beard unpacks the secrets of the city’s success with a crisp and merciless clarity that I have not seen equaled anywhere else…. We tend to think of the Romans as coarser successors to the Greeks. Yet Beard, who doubles as a Cambridge professor and a television lecturer of irresistible salty charm, shows us how the Roman Republic got underway at almost the same time as the Athenian democracy. And it evolved into just the kind of mixed system that sophisticated commentators like Aristotle and Polybius approved of.
Ferdinand Mount - New York Times Book Review


Where SPQR differs most from the standard history is in its clear-sighted honesty…. Beard tells this story precisely and clearly, with passion and without technical jargon…. SPQR is a grim success story, but one told with wonderful flair.
Greg Woolf - Wall Street Journal


Beard does precisely what few popularizers dare to try and plenty of dons can’t pull off: She conveys the thrill of puzzling over texts and events that are bound to be ambiguous, and she complicates received wisdom in the process. Her magisterial new history of Rome, SPQR…is no exception…. The ancient Romans, Beard shows, are relevant to people many centuries later who struggle with questions of power, citizenship, empire, and identity.
Emily Wilson - Atlantic


[Fun] helps define what sets Beard apart as commentator and what sets SPQR apart from other histories of Rome. Though she here claims that 50 years of training and study have led up to SPQR, Beard wears her learning lightly. As she takes us through the brothels, bars, and back alleys where the populus Romanus left their imprint, one senses, above all, that she is having fun.
James Romm - New Republic


A masterful new chronicle…. Beard is a sure-footed guide through arcane material that, in other hands, would grow tedious. Sifting myth from fact in dealing with the early history of the city, she enlivens—and deepens—scholarly debates by demonstrating how the Romans themselves shaped their legendary beginnings to short-term political ends…. Exemplary popular history, engaging but never dumbed down, providing both the grand sweep and the intimate details that bring the distant past vividly to life.
Economist


(Starred review.) The first millennium of Rome is Beard's topic in this delightful and extensive examination of what made Rome, and why we should care. Since the author is a well-known popularizer of classical studies, it is no surprise that this is a humorous and accessible work, but it is also extremely rigorous. —Margaret Heller, Loyola Univ. Chicago Libs.
Library Journal


(Starred review.) The acclaimed classicist delivers a massive history of ancient Rome...[writing] fascinatingly about how Rome grew and sustained its position.... Beard's enthusiasm for her subject is infectious and is well-reflected in her clever, thoroughly enjoyable style of writing. Lovers of Roman history will revel in this work, and new students will quickly become devotees.
Kirkus Reviews