Home Back

Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 937.7256807
EAN: 9780674029767
ISBN: 0674029763
Label: Belknap Press
Manufacturer: Belknap Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 384
Publication Date: December 15, 2008
Publisher: Belknap Press
Studio: Belknap Press

---

Related Items:

• Europe Between the Oceans: 9000 BC-AD 1000
• The Roman Triumph
• Pompeii and the Roman Villa: Art and Culture Around the Bay of Naples
• The Complete Pompeii
• American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House
• see more

---

Editorial Review:

Product Description:


Pompeii is the most famous archaeological site in the world, visited by more than two million people each year. Yet it is also one of the most puzzling, with an intriguing and sometimes violent history, from the sixth century BCE to the present day.



Destroyed by Vesuvius in 79 CE, the ruins of Pompeii offer the best evidence we have of life in the Roman Empire. But the eruptions are only part of the story. In The Fires of Vesuvius, acclaimed historian Mary Beard makes sense of the remains. She explores what kind of town it was—more like Calcutta or the Costa del Sol?—and what it can tell us about “ordinary” life there. From sex to politics, food to religion, slavery to literacy, Beard offers us the big picture even as she takes us close enough to the past to smell the bad breath and see the intestinal tapeworms of the inhabitants of the lost city. She resurrects the Temple of Isis as a testament to ancient multiculturalism. At the Suburban Baths we go from communal bathing to hygiene to erotica.



Recently, Pompeii has been a focus of pleasure and loss: from Pink Floyd’s memorable rock concert to Primo Levi’s elegy on the victims. But Pompeii still does not give up its secrets quite as easily as it may seem. This book shows us how much more and less there is to Pompeii than a city frozen in time as it went about its business on 24 August 79.

(20081006)




Rating: - The Dirt on Pompeii
Beard holds a chair in Classics at the University of Cambridge (UK) and has published several books on ancient history for the general reader. "Fires of Vesuvius" is in the nature of a summary or handbook of what the excavations and other scholarly efforts at Pompeii have to tell us about life there (and by extension in similar towns in Italy and perhaps elsewhere in Rome's empire). The book has separate chapters on the major aspects of life in Pompeii, from religion to sex, from daily commercial ... Read More

---

Rating: - not suitable for the Kindle
Due to the large number of interesting illustrations, this book would make a terrible choice for the Kindle, but it is good for the coffee table. The scholarship is deep yet the prose is readable and flows easily. Each chapter stands on its own, so you don't have to read the whole thing in one sitting. There is the obligatory chapter on Roman sexual practices, complete with shocking illustrations and a discussion about whether such images were used to advertise brothels or merely for decoration in ... Read More

---

Arts & Photography • Biographies & Memoirs • Business & Investing • Children's Books • Comics & Graphic Novels • Computers & Internet • Cooking, Food & Wine • Entertainment • Gay & Lesbian • Health, Mind & Body • History • Home & Garden • Law • Literature & Fiction • Medicine • Mystery & Thrillers • Nonfiction • Outdoors & Nature • Parenting & Families • Professional & Technical • Reference • Religion & Spirituality • Romance • Science • Science Fiction & Fantasy • Sports • Teens • Travel •