The First Man in Rome by Colleen McCullough Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Our Price: $3.96 You Save: $4.03 (50%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of The First Man in Rome
Book Review: Alpha and Omega
Summary: 5 Stars
This book is probably one that will addict anyone starting out by the first page. I picked this up in Iraq, a military public library and have since finished all the other five volumes.
The writing is unparalleled and the quality is amazing. I have to admit that the names sometimes confuse you, however your memory will definitely compensate for that as you'll strive to quench your thirst by reading through the book.
I recommend this book to anyone and applaud Colleen McCullough!
Book Review: Turns Marble into Flesh
Summary: 5 Stars
I'm not going to bother rehashing the plot, I'll just say what I love about this whole series of books. The best way I can put it is that it almost makes you feel like you are a citizen of the late republic and reading current events. Even though I was somewhat familiar with the subject matter prior to reading, it breathes life into historical figures like no other fictional book I've read. In fact, to call the series historical fiction is something of a disservice, I'd call it more like narrarative history it is so well researched.
It really helps to have at least a basic understanding of the period, it will make it far more enjoyable. I tried to read it about four years ago and couldn't get through it, but when I read it this year, having learned ALOT about the era, it was a breeze.
Book Review: Walking Hand in Hand with Marius and Sulla thru the Forum.
Summary: 5 Stars
Ms McCullough is a well known author since the publication of her very first novel: "The Thorn Birds" (1977). This kind of success is difficult to maintain in successive publications. Not for her!
With her "Roman Saga" started with the present volume in 1990 she achieved a new great editorial success.
Ms McCullough has done a profound research on the period and delivers an accurate picture of the late Roman Republic, bringing to life historically characters with amazing detail.
She follows and reveals step by step all the intricacies of that rich and complex era.
Does this mean that the book is boring? By no means, the author is able to show daily life, dressing, feeding, religious rituals, political and social structures in a magnificent fresco and at the same time construct an engaging story that will trap the reader for hours.
The story starts in the year 110 BC, when Marius and Sulla are still obscure characters. Both of them have enormous undeveloped potentialities. Fortune touch them in the person of Gaius Julius Caesar (grandfather), a rather poor but noblest Senator.
Thru matrimonial alliance with the Julian Family they initiate their astounding career. They start by going to Numidia to fight Jugurtha as subordinate officers. After a while they are in charge of the whole affair and successfully accomplish Roman's goals.
The narration goes on up to year 100 BC showing the German menace and the prelude to the "social wars".
The whole story of Marius and Sulla, Caesar and Pompey will be delivered in the next volumes that I am eager to read.
What delights me more is how Ms McCullough describes with detail many interesting historically characters, bringing them to life with a sort of "Roman ruthless".
Last but not least the author has drawn beautiful busts of the main characters and detailed maps of ancient Africa, Gaul and Rome itself!
I strongly recommend this book to any serious history aficionado!
Reviewed by Max Yofre.
Book Review: Encyclopedic Sociological Recreation Of Ancient Rome
Summary: 4 Stars
A heavy, slow book but also meticulously detailed and the nearest to a vacation in ancient Rome you can get for the price of a paperback. McCollough' story is set in the latter days of the Roman Republic and centers on the upstart Marius, a radical, brilliant, bold gambler of a military man who leads his nation through internal and external crises that threaten the stability and identity of the eternal city. It is also a novel about Sulla, who begins here a dissipating hedonist who aspires to dignified status, and by story's end caps a rising career of brave service by becoming the darling of Rome's conservative factions. This is also the story of two very different sisters, distant relations to the couple that will one day produce Julius Caesar, who wed the men at the foundation of this novel, and help guide their husbands to their unique destinies. In The First Man In Rome, there is a glossary that does much more than define terms that might be foreign to the modern mind, it also educates about everything from Roman clothing and foods, to the Roman way of keeping time, the Roman martial arts, legal system and economy, and the social structure of the era. This is a novel firmly grounded in fact and it shows. If it bogs you down with its slow tone, keep with it, it rewards you for your perseverance, especially in retrospect.Book Review: More addictive than crack cocaine
Summary: 5 Stars
This "Rome" series of books, of which this novel is the first, is the best read I have ever had in my entire life! The words compulsive and fascinating are simply too flat and characterless to do justice to this series. If I was ever stranded on a desert island with only one thing to read for the rest of my life it would be this series of novels, they are that good. One of my very real epiphanies in reading this was how similar the politics of Rome were to our politics today. I think anyone reading this will be similarly struck and it is not hard to envision dropping the Roman senate down in Washington and not seeing any real change in our daily lives. The headlines would all be the same, the debates as sharp, the slandering and pandering, the demonizations, and the partisanship and bickering would go on without the slightest flicker of disruption!
I first read these books about seven years ago, and then read them all over again last year when the last installment came out. After I finished reading them the second time I nearly started over again at the beginning for a third go round, but decided instead to go and read other works relating to Rome and some works of the ancients themselves, including Caesar and Cicero.
These novels cover the period of Rome from about 110 BC to roughly 40 BC, a period of great change and upheaval for the republic that eventually led to the empire (sounds a bit like the star wars series, doesn't it? I think George cribbed a lot of notes from Roman history). This first novel deals with Gaius Marius and his rise to incredible power even though he was not one of Rome's "inner circle of elite". Gaius was a military innovator and was responsible for some sweeping changes in the legions that improved their deadly efficacy and transformed the nature of what it meant to be a legionaire; from gentleman farmer to professional soldier. The new legion structure was actually similar in many respects to our military organization today.
This is a grand book, with characters that seem more alive and more real, than many flesh and blood people we deal with in our daily lives. The character development McCullough achieves is nothing short of mind-bending and indeed may make you a pickier reader in the future.
I would whole-heartedly recommend this book, and the entire series, to any reader. It is difficult to pick a favorite out of the series, and I don't think I could, but I really, really enjoyed this first novel as much as any of them.
One cautionary note, since some of my friends are ancient history buffs, is that while the known "facts" in McCullough's series are extremely accurate and she did an incredible amount of research for these books (will someone give her an honorary doctorate please?), people's personalities and their daily lives between the big, recorded facts of history are not as well established. I love McCullough's impression and interpretation and I think few could gainsay her much in her works. Her Caesar and Sulla though may get more favorable treatment from her than other commentators and novelists might elect to award. That, however is one of the greatest things about these books: after the compulsive reading is over comes the compulsive conversations, the debating with friends about this or that, and the further exploration of one of the most facinating periods in history.