Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire

After reading Mary Beard's S.P.Q.R., which was focused more on dispelling some of the myths surrounding Rome's history and shedding light upon the lives of ordinary people, I wanted to learn a bit more about the big, legendary characters and the huge events that shaped the ancient world. This book delivered big time.

Initially, I wasn't sure if the format will work for me. Each chapter is focusing on the life of one historical character and they picked a few most important ones from Rome's history. It actually works surprisingly well. You get plenty of background information, so it's not just simple biographies and the big events are explained really well.

So if you want to learn more about the Roman Empire with the focus on the most well known characters and events - this is your book. Very enjoyable read.