Rome: The Biography of a City | 
| Author: Christopher Hibbert
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Category: Book
List Price: $33.54
Buy Used: $1.30
You Save: $32.24 (96%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 70406
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 400
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.6
Dimensions (in): 9.6 x 7.4 x 1.2
ISBN: 0140070788
Dewey Decimal Number: 945.632
EAN: 9780140070781
ASIN: 0140070788
Publication Date: March 1, 1988
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Some shelf wear (scratches & markings) to covers/corners/spine. Corner bend & separation to front/back covers. Bend in front/back covers. Soiling to edges of pgs. Name written on first pg. Pages are yellowed. Top/bottom of all pgs have corner bend. No highlighting within. Binding in good condition.
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Product Description
Rome is, indeed, the eternal city! Even a century ago, people came from all over the world to see its ancient treasures, inspired works of art, lively piazzas and to experience la dolce vita. Now you can pack your bags and take a trip back in time to explore early 20th-century Rome in all of its turn-of-the-century splendor.
• Memories of Times Past: Rome is an elegant and beautiful book, inspired by the quaint travelogues of the late 1800s.
• See Italy’s capital city in a fresh, new way! This beautiful volume combines art, social history, and scrapbook souvenirs to give readers a vivid sense of day-to-day life in turn-of-the-century Rome.
• Each chapter couples historical paintings with intelligent and knowledgeable commentary by modern authors who know and love Rome.
• Every spread is rich with colorful details and artifacts. Original paintings, illustrations, period maps, photos, ticket stubs, coins and news clippings bring bygone days to life.
• All roads lead to Rome! Memories of Times Past: Rome will be treasured by anyone who has ever fallen in love with this glorious city and its history.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
Engrossing, detailed .... but not totally satisfying October 18, 2005
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I found the book to be well written and engaging in that typical British anecdotal style that breathes life into historical characters. It offers a detailed account of the sometimes bizarre history of this magnificent city during more than two millennia, all in one book, up until the middle of the 20th century.
However, I felt that the book was quite lacking in providing answers, or even clues to answers, to the Big Questions: the rise and fall of the Republic and the later Empire, and the rise of Christianity. I did miss the context of all these facts that streamed by page after page, and there was no scholarly interpretation from the learned author regarding these inevitable Big Questions.
The latter part of the book gets even better, when the author seems more at ease dealing with the 19th and 20th century. I found the detailed portrait of the rise and fall of the fascist state headed by Mussolini especially riveting. But even there, I wanted a bit more background and historical interpretation.
If you look for a book that introduces you to more than two thousand years of Roman history, and is both educating and reads more like a novel than a thesis, you will not be disappointed. Furthermore, the book includes maps and pictures, to be used during a stay in the Eternal City. But if you want a more intellectual interpretation, there are better books on offer. I decided to buy both.
 Just the Facts, Please June 30, 2004
15 out of 19 found this review helpful
In Self-Reliance, Emerson says, "In history our imagination plays us false. Kingdom and lordship, power and estate are gaudier vocabulary than private John and Edward in a small house and common day's work; but the things of life are the same to both; the sum total of both is the same," (130). This is a good place to begin articulating my discomfort with Hibbert's Rome: The Biography of a City. Halfway through the book one still has not seen any of Emerson's view that history is more than a succession of popes and kings. On the contrary, Hibbert seems to think that history is only that. It is an older book, and so we spare it some of our modern politics, but thus far, I've read nothing of women, nothing even of artists or architects in a city renowned for these, only that this king fought with this pope etc. through the centuries. I thought historians somehow knew better. One possible explanation for Hibbert's lack of attention to the actual soul of Rome is that he casts a broad net, writing so many histories he can hardly have time to do anything like justice to a place. He's written about France, Britain, America, and India, about their revolutions and separate books about their major figures, lending the impression that he may approach theses "biographies" like assembly-line machinery. One last neglect which seems to me not only in bad taste, but odd: Hibbert's Rome has been pretty overt in its dismissal of the Catholic Church. Nothing has been said about its many acts of charity, nor of its social/art educational status in the community, nor about the individual faiths of the saints and pilgrims, whose devotion, in the face of such obvious abuses, I find heartening.
A bird's eye view of an incredible uninterrupted history May 4, 2004
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
With a book that covers over 2,500 years of history, don't expect in-depth coverage here. That's not what this book is about. It provides a very good, bird's-eye view of the city and its history, however, and does a good job of impressing on the reader the incredible continuity of the city's history. I think there's a tendency to concentrate on ancient Rome and then to jump a thousand years to the Renaissance and the Baroque, without focusing on the incredible medieval history of the city. I found the chapters of the book devoted to the medieval period to be some of the more interesting.
 Great Concise History of Rome October 26, 2001
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
This is a good book for those interested in learning about general Rome History but not necessarily in reading thick textbooks. If you're interested in learning about specific periods/events (or the Roman Empire as a whole), you might want to look elsewhere. If you're interested in reading about a great city as a whole, this is a solid choice.
Reads like a novel July 15, 2001
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
I planned to visit Rome and was told Mr Hibbert's book was better than any travel guide. I was worried it would be a boring, textbook read. To my surprise, I was absolutely engrossed from cover to cover. The endnotes were a bit too inclusive for my taste, but for a true historian, the information would be captivating. Mr. Hibbert's focus on numerous Vatican events is eye opening.
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