A Singular Empire
REVIEW
From the
MAY-JUNE 2012
issue
issue
|
April 25, 2012
Greg Woolf, Rome: An Empire’s Story (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 384 pp., $29.95.
"Woolf’s book is not about learning lessons for the modern world or comparing our society and states to Rome. Instead, this is history as it should be written and studied—looking at the past on its own terms in an attempt to understand it. This is a worthwhile end in itself, but it is also essential before making any attempt to draw lessons for the modern world. Drawing hasty analogies from the past often reveals no more than the author’s own preoccupations."
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