Anthony Everitt
Augustus: the Life of Rome’s First Emperor
Random House (Hardcover)
List Price: $26.95. A Cappella Price: $21.56.

In the preface to his new history of the first Roman emperor, Anthony Everitt calls Augustus the founding father of western civilization. The description is difficult to dispute. Augustus gave us much that our political world is built upon and much cruelty and injustice that plague us still. He was one of the first proverbial great white European men, but great only in the old mannered historian’s definition of great. His life was enormous and changed the human world forever. In so many ways he was a repellent monster. Then again by the standards of his time he was quite the moderate. For 40 plus years Augustus ruled a Roman empire of relative prosperity and calm. Numerous books have been published about this remarkable, complex man and his kingdom. None bring him to life or make him real to the 21st century reader better than Everitt’s new study.
– Glen Thrasher