Fantastic

An ingenious way of giving 23 centuries of Roman history in a concise and fascinating way. The narration conveys the story of Rome in an engaging manner. All together an excellent audio book.

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7 people found this helpful

Awful pronunciation a let-down, otherwise good

It surely can't be too difficult for a professional narrator to find an Italian, any Italian, to go over the pronunciation of a few names and places...or he could just look up the Italian pronunciation online. Very good book but there are so many names and places which are apparently pronounced entirely at random that it spoiled the book for me. Other listeners might not find this off-putting but if you know Rome well, the pronunciation is often so cringeworthy that I had to ask for a refund, despite enjoying the content.

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10 people found this helpful

amazing book

thoroughly enjoyed this book, the history of Rome has always been fascinating to me, this book talks about events I didn't even know about

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1 person found this helpful

Great story, well told - shame about the Italian!

Fascinating history, very well written. The narrator is enthusiastic and engaging - but reads Italian words by turns as if they were either French or Spanish. For anyone with even a passing knowledge of Italian, this is really distracting. When doing an audiobook set in Italy and stuffed with Italian names, surely the producers have a responsibility to find someone who actually knows how to pronounce them - and the narrator also has a responsibility to find out how they are pronounced rather than just blatantly guessing. Disappointing.

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17 people found this helpful

great narrative framework. poor delivery

this was a great idea for a review of Romes history and a very clear interesting narrative. as with most audio books it is very frustrating not to be able to refer to chapter titles in order to navigate the book. the real drawback of so many audio books. why such a problem to include chapter titles so you can go back?
the narrator was frankly poor. his voice was ok. pace ok. but syntax frequently off especially when reading lists. and when the book includes so many foreign words pick a reader who knows something of the language. pronunciation was inconsistent and often just wrong. really grating delivery and a difficult listen. even some retakes were included in a couple of places so very poor editing

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2 people found this helpful

Excellent popular history

An enjoyable read about the Eternal City in some of its darkest times. The author’s style is concise but entertaining, while the narrator handles things adeptly. However, he does stumble over the Italian wording here and there. For example, his pronunciation of ‘Trastevere’ set my teeth on edge a little. But this is minor quibble.

Of the sackings, there were occasions where I was amazed how lightly Rome got off compared with other cities in similar eras. On other occasions, particularly when Imperial forces sacked the city after its fall in 1527, the hell Rome citizens went through was simply appalling. Some of the history I had not encountered before and will enjoy reading-up on further.

The author’s handling of the two modern occupations, particularly his exploration of the German occupation from 43-44, was thought-provoking, especially the relationship Romans had with fascism - largely content when things went right, angered and confused when things fell apart. It’s here, perhaps, that one encounters the work's weakest point: some important events are skirted over and the question of culpability for fascism among the Romans is often left hanging.

A final positive point was the author's ability to link the previous sacks of Rome to the one under discussion, and to assess the history leading up to the point at which the city is taken over. All of this is done with broad strokes but without losing detail. Overall, an excellent audiobook and one for any fan of Rome or those with an interest in general history.

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1 person found this helpful

A decent overview of nearly 3,000 years of history

Rome is the eternal city, it always rises from the ashes like a phoenix, so an appropriate historical narrative to chronicle an incredibly long history are the various instances people may have written off the eternal city.
Beginning with the Gallic or Celtic sack of Rome in 387, and moving to the famous sack of Rome by Alaric the Goth, famously illuminated in St Augustine's City of God, to the occupation of Rome by Germany and later the allies in WWII.
Kneale provides some interesting scholarship to these accounts, including insights that Alaric's sack of Rome may have been grossly exaggerated by the accounts, as it was more a siege than an actual sack.
The later part detailing Mussolini's rule of Italy sheds valuable light, revealing that Rome has a much greater Fascist imprint than many would like to acknowledge, but this, according to Kneale, isn't as bad as one may assume as Mussolini's brand of Fascism was tame when compared to the Naziism or Bolshevism of his day.
Like many works, Kneale's account succumbs to the tendency to devote far too much time to recent history, particularly WWII, as the chapter on WWII is heavily detailed and ends up feeling overly long, but on the whole, minor snags in what is otherwise a brilliant and highly readable account.
Gardner's narration is enjoyable and keeps an even pace, making this an enjoyable listen.

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Interesting but badly narrated

The narrator has no idea how to pronounce Italian (which should have been in the job description!) & even pronounces the same words differently. He also pronounces “new” & “knew” as “noo” - like Scots for “now”!
The part describing Mussolini’s rise & fall and the Nazi occupation was the most interesting to me. I didn’t notice how many signs of the fascist era are still visible to this day when I was in Rome, perhaps because an even nastier régime eclipses Italian fascism

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Too bad for the Italian names!

As an Italian (though not from Rome) and a history aficionado, this book was a pleasant surprise! I was most familiar with the proper sackings of 410 and 1527, so I was curious as to which other moments of history the author had chosen: I didn't know much about the events from the 536, 1084 and 1848 conflicts (although I knew more about the last one - shoutout for mentioning Andrea Aguyar!)
I also like the tripartite structure of the chapters, which I learnt to like from another book I really like.
So the book itself was engaging, well-documented (to the best of my knowledge), and be listened to in a short while (it took me only a few days, and I'm not a great listener). However, I do feel like I have to point out one shortcoming of the reader: it flows really well for the most part but when he starts reading Italian names (and he might have expected that in a book on Rome there would be plenty!), I think that he really should have consulted a native speaker! I can understand that strings of words like "San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane", or even whole quotes in Italian, might look daunting for English-speaking people who don't know the language, but many other nouns are much simpler, and they also feature a lot in the narration (as well as not requiring any weird sound that isn't already in English), like the "Gianicolo" hill (accent on the "i"), which he reads "Giancolo" (accent on the "o"), "Chigi" (pronounced "kiji", not tchigi"), or that bane of English speakers "Medici", which has its accent on the "e"! I think he could have prepared himself better on that front; overall, however, it was an enjoyable listening, I just cringed a bit for his reading of Italian names...

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4 people found this helpful

Fascinating and brilliantly structured

Very cleverly, Matthew Kneale chooses seven key moments as windows into Rome's history. The approach works and you get a real sense of Rome's story in a short book. The audio narration has some slightly teeth-tingling pronunciation of Italian names but otherwise is engaging and well paced.

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3 people found this helpful