Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

If you're looking for a nonfictional book of ancient Rome that successfully captures the history in a way that is intriguing and colorful and goes deeper than your typical bland and colorless encyclopedia types then I'm sorry to say this book isn't the one. I think my issue with this book was that although it presented the pivotal events in Rome's history in an efficient and moderately interesting way, it suffered due to the author's perpetual campaigning to show ancient Rome's political and social issues and how they mirror our current political system. The motivations behind the book aren't derived from an artistic attempt to portray Rome's intriguing and most iconic figures or the heated atmosphere of climactic events. Rather the motivations come from the author's interest in social issues. For example, there are more pages dedicated to Tiberius Gracchus and his reforming crusade than the entire 200 years of amazing events that preceded him including the Punic Wars and Hannibal's conquest. Those motivations also explain the author's disapproval of his subject; Ancient Rome. It was frustrating to read the frequent comments he made that stressed Rome's disingenuous actions whenever he possibly could. Writers so often become the moral police of history. How can a historian truly discover an intriguing concept from Roman history if he's more concerned with showing readers the immorality of Rome's rise to power. I think most people who are looking for a book on ancient Rome are intrigued by it and are hoping to find a source that can help them better understand that which intrigues them and experience something below the surface. However, it's rare to find a historian that can be an artist as well. I originally gave the book 3 stars because at least it gave a basic history of Rome's rise and fall in a "page-turning" way, but the more I read the more I felt like the author was trying to persuade me on current politics rather than Ancient Rome. If anybody knows of a captivating book on Ancient Rome and I don't mean the colossus style book of Gibbon leave a comment.