Here are 100 books that Rome fans have personally recommended if you like
Rome.
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I write stories where consequence comes first. I grew up immersed in Greek/Egyptian mythology and fairy tales, but I was always more drawn to the parts they left out. I wanted to know what daily life looked like for someone like Hercules, not just the story beats. Or what happens when the moral of the story isn’t learned. My passion lies in exploring the cost of power, the wounds we carry (that are often excluded from stories), and the myths we create to justify them. I believe the best fantasy doesn’t just help us escape the world, it helps us to look at ours differently.
This was the first fantasy book that made me afraid for its characters and helped me understand that fantasy is allowed to feel realistic.
Up until this point, the types of books I was reading were very paint-by-numbers, but here the stakes felt real because no one was safe... not even the ones who seemed typical fantasy rules were untouchable.
What stuck with me wasn’t the true-to-form fantasy bits (dragons/battles), but how human the characters felt. In this world, loyalty is a death sentence... love is dangerous, and power always comes with a price.
HBO's hit series A GAME OF THRONES is based on George R R Martin's internationally bestselling series A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE, the greatest fantasy epic of the modern age. A GAME OF THRONES is the first volume in the series.
'Completely immersive' Guardian
'When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground'
Summers span decades. Winter can last a lifetime. And the struggle for the Iron Throne has begun.
From the fertile south, where heat breeds conspiracy, to the vast and savage eastern lands, all the way to the frozen…
The Victorian mansion, Evenmere, is the mechanism that runs the universe.
The lamps must be lit, or the stars die. The clocks must be wound, or Time ceases. The Balance between Order and Chaos must be preserved, or Existence crumbles.
Appointed the Steward of Evenmere, Carter Anderson must learn the…
I am a writer and novelist who comes to storytelling via several curious paths. I am a historian trained in archival research and the collection of oral histories. I also come from a long line of ghost magnets–all of the women in my family have been for generations. And while I am living in blissful exile on the West Coast, my heart remains bound to my childhood home, the Great State of Texas.
This remains one of the most haunting novels I have ever read. I cannot shake the character of Judge Holden, a formidable man both physically and intellectually, who deploys his insidious intellect to justify acts of abject violence seemingly only for the sake of violence itself. I was mesmerized by a world where “all covenants were brittle.” This was no straight-up Western as I had expected. It was something more.
McCarthy pushed the boundaries of the classic Western by challenging the notion that good will ultimately overcome evil and the hero will save the day. There was no hero here, and the day was truly lost to forces beyond the characters’ control, hallmarks of the Southern Gothic tradition. I was hooked on this curious blend of genres!
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy is an epic novel of the violence and depravity that attended America's westward expansion, brilliantly subverting the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the Wild West. Based on historical events that took place on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, it traces the fortunes of the Kid, a fourteen-year-old Tennessean who stumbles into a nightmarish world where Indians are being murdered and the market for their scalps is thriving.
I’m a Roman historian (associate professor at the University of Birmingham, UK), who’s particularly interested in understanding the nature of Roman power and how Rome’s presence and impact within the Mediterranean changed over time. I’m dyslexic and I think this, in part, might explain why I am quite a visual learner and find material culture a really valuable way to engage with the past, just as much as through written sources. I really hope that my selection of books offers you various different (and perhaps new) ways to think about ancient Rome!
I love historical detective novels, and this one, set in AD 70, is a great way to immerse yourself in the Roman world. Lindsey Davis does her research, creating a real, lived-in space that makes the ancient past feel alive and present.
Another big plus is that it’s hilariously entertaining: I’m regularly guffawing out loud while reading it. Best of all? It’s the first book in a fantastic series, and I’ve enjoyed following private instigator Marcus Didius Falco, and then later his daughter, Flavia Alba, over a number of adventures across the city of Rome and the wider Empire.
Rome. AD 70. Private eye Marcus Didius Falco knows his way round the eternal city. He can handle the muggers, the police and most of the girls. But one fresh 16 year old, Sosia Camillina, finds him a case no Roman should be getting his nose into . . . Sosia's uncle is a Senator with suspicions. Some friends, Romans and countryment are doing a highly profitable, if highly illegal, trade in silver ingots or pigs. For Falco it's the start of a murderous trail that leads far beyond the seven hills. To a godforsaken land called Britain, to Emperor…
The Guardian of the Palace is the first novel in a modern fantasy series set in a New York City where magic is real—but hidden, suppressed, and dangerous when exposed.
When an ancient magic begins to leak into the world, a small group of unlikely allies is forced to act…
As a child, I learned that I was able to lucid dream at will, speaking to the beings I met in these places I’d never seen before, and it always gave me a sense of interconnectedness. A thread that goes through all of us and our histories. I believe that the ancients dedicated so much of their energy and resources to preserving their stories in order to maintain this connection because it’s so important. Inside all of us is a darkness that, if left unchecked would lead us to ruin. These books all demonstrate the inner struggle we have to understand and redirect that darkness toward the light and the good.
This book explores the customs and development of the Polynesian Islands prior to interference from European powers.
I see the rawest forms of our instincts and psychology in the indigenous peoples of the world. This book is a call for all readers to suspend the tendency to judge other cultures and time periods and just be observers.
Pulitzer Prize–winning author James A. Michener brings Hawaii’s epic history vividly to life in a classic saga that has captivated readers since its initial publication in 1959. As the volcanic Hawaiian Islands sprout from the ocean floor, the land remains untouched for centuries—until, little more than a thousand years ago, Polynesian seafarers make the perilous journey across the Pacific, flourishing in this tropical paradise according to their ancient traditions. Then, in the early nineteenth century, American missionaries arrive, bringing with them a new creed and a new way of life. Based on exhaustive research and told in Michener’s immersive prose,…
I’m a Roman historian (associate professor at the University of Birmingham, UK), who’s particularly interested in understanding the nature of Roman power and how Rome’s presence and impact within the Mediterranean changed over time. I’m dyslexic and I think this, in part, might explain why I am quite a visual learner and find material culture a really valuable way to engage with the past, just as much as through written sources. I really hope that my selection of books offers you various different (and perhaps new) ways to think about ancient Rome!
In my own research, I’m interested in how Roman imperialism is shaped through the concept of peace and this is central to Tom Holland’s latest examination of power in the ancient Mediterranean world.
I found myself sucked into to the cinematic accounts of shocking and poignant events, such as the erection of Vesuvius and the sacking of Jerusalem, yet also really struck by how Holland manages to paint a picture of the vast diversity and difference to be experienced in the Roman world. And I particularly like that he reminds us how different the Romans are from ourselves.
The definitive history of Rome's golden age - antiquity's ultimate superpower at the pinnacle of its greatness
The Pax Romana has long been revered as a golden age. At its peak, the Roman Empire stretched from Scotland to Arabia, and contained perhaps a quarter of humanity. It was the wealthiest and most formidable state the world had yet seen.
Beginning in 69AD, a year that saw four Caesars in succession rule the empire, and ending some seven decades later with the death of Hadrian, Pax presents a dazzling history of Rome at the height of its power. From the gilded…
I’m a Roman historian (associate professor at the University of Birmingham, UK), who’s particularly interested in understanding the nature of Roman power and how Rome’s presence and impact within the Mediterranean changed over time. I’m dyslexic and I think this, in part, might explain why I am quite a visual learner and find material culture a really valuable way to engage with the past, just as much as through written sources. I really hope that my selection of books offers you various different (and perhaps new) ways to think about ancient Rome!
What I really enjoy about this book is the engaging and lively way in which Emma Dench examines, across a broad chronological (third century BC to third century AD) and geographical scope, the various different ways in which local peoples, groups, identities, and cultures experienced and responded to Roman power.
I particularly appreciate how the emphasis is not on accepting a sense of loyalty to Rome but rather the importance of the political currency of Roman symbols of power within a complex and wide-ranging negotiation of identity in the Mediterranean world. Perhaps one of my favourite things about the book is the diverse range of places, peoples, and evidence explored.
This book evaluates a hundred years of scholarship on how empire transformed the Roman world, and advances a new theory of how the empire worked and was experienced. It engages extensively with Rome's Republican empire as well as the 'Empire of the Caesars', examines a broad range of ancient evidence (material, documentary, and literary) that illuminates multiple perspectives, and emphasizes the much longer history of imperial rule within which the Roman Empire emerged. Steering a course between overemphasis on resistance and overemphasis on consensus, it highlights the political, social, religious and cultural consequences of an imperial system within which functions…
Aury and Scott travel to the Finger Lakes in New York’s wine country to get to the bottom of the mysterious happenings at the Songscape Winery. Disturbed furniture and curious noises are one thing, but when a customer winds up dead, it’s time to dig into the details and see…
I’m a Roman historian (associate professor at the University of Birmingham, UK), who’s particularly interested in understanding the nature of Roman power and how Rome’s presence and impact within the Mediterranean changed over time. I’m dyslexic and I think this, in part, might explain why I am quite a visual learner and find material culture a really valuable way to engage with the past, just as much as through written sources. I really hope that my selection of books offers you various different (and perhaps new) ways to think about ancient Rome!
I hold up my hands and admit to being a nerd when it comes to ancient coins – there is something immediate and tangible about the past and the messages people communicated on these small, everyday objects exchanging hands.
Clare Rowan’s book (and also Liv Yarrow’s book, The Roman Republic to 49 BCE: Using Coins as Sources) is a great introduction to understanding how to ‘read’ ancient Roman coins and what they can help us understand about the end of the Roman Republic and the birth of the Empire.
Plus, as a visual learner, I love that there are so many images in the book!
This unique book provides the student of Roman history with an accessible and detailed introduction to Roman and provincial coinage in the late Republic and early Empire in the context of current historical themes and debates. Almost two hundred different coins are illustrated at double life size, with each described in detail, and technical Latin and numismatic terms are explained. Chapters are arranged chronologically, allowing students to quickly identify material relevant to Julius Caesar, the second triumvirate, the relationship between Antony and Cleopatra, and the Principate of Augustus. Iconography, archaeological contexts, and the economy are clearly presented. A diverse array…
As a boy, I loved reading about science and technology and became a physicist. To my surprise, I found myself increasingly drawn to studying the history of science and philosophy of science, which attempts to understand how and why science “works.” I resigned from my job as a physicist and devoted myself to full-time graduate study in this field, enjoying every moment of it. I began a forty-nine-year academic career—the last thirty-nine at Lehigh University—teaching courses of my own design in the history and philosophy of science and also in how science, technology, and society mutually influence one another. I can honestly say that I remain excited even now about attempting to understand how scientific knowledge impacts society.
I especially love reading historically important scientific works themselves. Reading them, you participate in the thinking of a great scientist and get a feeling for the thinker. Many of these are accessible to the general reader, among them this book, an important contribution to the creation of modern science.
It so angered the Pope that he turned Galileo over to the Roman Inquisition, who found him guilty of heresy for not-so-subtly arguing the truth of Copernicus’ theory that the Earth is not motionless at the center of the universe, as was then believed and defended by the Church but moves around the Sun just like all the other planets. In exchange for publicly recanting this view, he was sentenced to house arrest for the rest of his life.
Galileo’s Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, published in Florence in 1632, was the most proximate cause of his being brought to trial before the Inquisition. Using the dialogue form, a genre common in classical philosophical works, Galileo masterfully demonstrates the truth of the Copernican system over the Ptolemaic one, proving, for the first time, that the earth revolves around the sun. Its influence is incalculable. The Dialogue is not only one of the most important scientific treatises ever written, but a work of supreme clarity and accessibility, remaining as readable now as when it was first published. This…
I have spent 50 years studying, teaching, and writing about Roman history, participating in and leading many archaeological expeditions to the Roman world, particularly in Greece, Italy, Turkey, and the Levant. I have written a dozen books on the ancient world, including the best-selling Cleopatra: A Biography. Ancient Rome is both my expertise and passion.
This is probably the best recent one-volume history of Rome, which covers the entire scope of the Roman world from its beginnings to its collapse. It is nicely illustrated, and gives a solid summary of the Roman environment that is easily understood by non-specialists. It is an exciting story: from a village on the Tiber River to ruling the world, an unexpected process that is well laid out.
How did a single village community in the Italian peninsula eventually become one of the most powerful imperial powers the world has ever known? In A Brief History of the Romans, Second Edition, Mary T. Boatwright, Daniel J. Gargola, Richard J.A. Talbert, and new coauthor Noel Lenski explore this question as they guide students through a comprehensive sweep of Roman history, ranging from the prehistoric settlements to the fall of the empire in 476. Addressing issues that still confront modern states worldwide--including warfare, empire building, consensus forging, and political fragmentation--the authors also provide glimpses into everyday Roman life and perspective,…
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
They say true happiness is finding something you love, and getting paid to do it, which makes me one happy bunny. Ancient history has been my passion, my hobby and my job for the past three decades, and I still wake up every morning looking forward to another day of it. Thanks to the internet I can study the classics and still hike in the mountains and kayak the mountain lakes of my corner of British Columbia. It doesn't get better than this.
A self-contained description of a war fought in Africa against an ambitious monarch, in which the Roman superpower struggles with an elusive enemy. Roman efforts are badly hampered by corrupt generals and Sallust, writing a generation later makes no attempt to conceal his contempt for the aristocratic establishment which happily pocketed Jugurtha's bribes. A book that reads well and is relevant today. Get the Oxford University Press edition, and get the Catiline conspiracy thrown in for free.
Sallust (86-c. 35 bc) is the earliest Roman historian of whom complete works survive, a senator of the Roman Republic and younger contemporary of Cicero, Pompey and Julius Caesar. His Catiline's War tells of the conspiracy in 63 bc led by L. Sergius Catilina, who plotted to assassinate numerous senators and take control of the government, but was thwarted by Cicero. Sallust's vivid account of Roman public life shows a Republic in decline, prey to moral corruption and internal strife. In The Jugurthine War he describes Rome's fight in Africa against the king of the Numidians from 111 to 105…
