Ancient Rome: A Military And Political History

Roman civilization is well known for their expansion of an empire and their acts of war against surrounding cities. Christopher Mackay describes the wars that Rome fought in to gain their dominance. One war that Mackay talks about is the war that Rome fought against themselves between the military and the political systems. He brings the history of Rome to life by starting in the early stages of just a city in the Italian peninsula and ending with the fall of once the greatest empire in the world. Ancient Rome: A Military and Political History provides its readers with the history of Rome that is known and also with the history of Rome that seems to be behind the scenes in our history textbooks. With the title Mackay gives the reader, you may think that this book is about two topics of the Roman Empire but that is wrong. Mackay starts out telling us in the introduction that he will be giving a straight forward presentation of the history of war and how it is tied in with the political aspects of the Roman …show more content…
Mackay does a swell job of this by dividing his work into twenty-four information filled chapters and by also staying in the middle and choosing one side of the information over the other. And to help the reader he splits those into five different parts. On each part he describes where he got his sources from and give a small introduction about the period of time he will be talking about. Mackay condenses many years of the Roman Empire in a superb way by not giving every little detail and making the reader feel overwhelmed. Mackay tells the story of the Romans in a way that will make the reader feel as if he cannot put down the book. The book maybe a little overpriced at $27 but it is a good read and should almost be mandatory to students when learning about the Roman