Through engrossing essays and fictional eye-witness accounts, Roy Burrell vividly recreates 2,000 years of stormy and fascinating Roman history for children ages 9-12. Accompanied by Peter Connolly's remarkable maps, cross-sections, detailed drawings, and even a complete scale model of what Rome may have looked like at the height of its glory, THE ROMANS will pique a child's interest before he has even read a single word. This is juvenile history at it's best -- accurate, detailed, and thoroughly entertaining.L
Read More
Through engrossing essays and fictional eye-witness accounts, Roy Burrell vividly recreates 2,000 years of stormy and fascinating Roman history for children ages 9-12. Accompanied by Peter Connolly's remarkable maps, cross-sections, detailed drawings, and even a complete scale model of what Rome may have looked like at the height of its glory, THE ROMANS will pique a child's interest before he has even read a single word. This is juvenile history at it's best -- accurate, detailed, and thoroughly entertaining.L
Read Less
Nice but clearly the least well written of the set
I studied "A First Ancient History"in the 4th grade and then "The Greeks" in the 5th grade. I was expecting to study this book in the 6th but I was shocked to find out that this was not being taught. Ever since then, I have pined away for this book (14 years in total...It's a long time). After graduating, finding employment and obtaining a credit card, I was finally able to purchase it from Alibris. Was it worth it? Well yes and no. In my opinion, "A First Ancient History" and "The Greeks" were extremely well written and the chapters were set in a very organised fashion and many of them built on the content of the preceding ones. They made great reading. I still pull them out from the bottom of my bookshelf and skim through them time and again and enjoy myself everytime and also refresh my knowledge of the ancient civilisations of the Middle East as well as Greece & Persia. This book is not Roy Burrell's best work in this series. In fact, it is an inferior one. Having "studied"the first two books, I found most of the chapters boring and often stifled a yawn whilst going through it for the first time. Rome was a very rich civilisation and occupies a prominent place in ancient world history. Yet Burrell fails to capture its magnificence as he did for Ancient Greece in "The Greeks." In fact, few notable historical events are portrayed in the books and the focus on everyday life and culture are no more that overly long and monotonic accounts. So it's not exactly a great way to end a series. Perhaps it was my enjoyment of the first two books or the long wait that I had to endure that made my expectations for this book too high. I cannot recommend it for casual history readers nor can I condemn it. Buy it in conjunction with the first two books or skip it and search Alibris for a better book regarding Ancient Rome. Morituri te salutant!!!
