As Mary Beard shows in "The Fires of Vesuvius," her marvelous
excavation of Pompeii's history, the city is rarely what it is
billed to be. A leading historian of Roman culture, a prolific
essayist and an irrepressible blogger, Beard punctures conventional
pieties about history and culture with formidable scholarly
authority, always paying keen attention to the layering effects of
the passage of time...With "The Fires of Vesuvius," Beard has
produced a lusciously detailed, erudite account of life in ancient
Pompeii...The challenge of "The Fires of Vesuvius" rests in the way
that its portrait of Pompeii overturns longstanding conceptions
about the empire to which the city belonged. Most important is
Beard's depiction of the chaotic diversity of Pompeian life--the
sheer variety of its religious experience, its linguistic
multiplicity, its class tensions--which raises far-reaching
questions about the nature of cultural and political identity in
the imperial Roman context...With its focus on labor, education and
religion, "The Fires of Vesuvius" is a testament to how much Roman
studies has to offer the contemporary political imagination.
Well-informed in the latest research in demography, the history of
Roman politics, architecture, ancient economics, feminist and
post-colonial studies, Beard probes the experience of men and
women, free and slave, rich and poor...The point that permeates
Beard's work, along with much of the best of classical cultural and
literary studies, is that part of the job of studying the past is
to examine the assumptions of each storyteller and the effect each
of their stories has, ripple-like, on the rest. Beard's depiction
of Pompeii manages to do justice to all its alien strangeness while
prompting us to reflect on the significance of felt resemblances
between its experience and our own--in the formation of cultural
identity, habits of consumption, political nepotism, religion,
sexuality, violent entertainments and much more.--Joy
Connolly"The
[A] wry, recondite and colorful story of what is known and what is
conjectured about life in Pompeii before the fall...Like a canny
cook making a banquet from scant means, Beard creates a living
Pompeii for the reader from the hard evidence at her disposal.
Though she is a skeptic, never pretending to ingredients she
doesn't have in her larder, she knows how to take the gaudy
razzmatazz of a building's facade or the messy amalgam of workaday
shops jumbled with mansions, and make them do a little singing for
the reader...This is a lively piece of work, with an easy
familiarity and obvious pleasure in the subject, wearing its
knowledge lightly, and not above some mischievous poking at
Pompeii's many controversies.--Peter Lewis"San Francisco Chronicle"
(12/21/2008)
[Fires of Vesuvius] offered me a wealth of riveting information on
the vanished city, written with clarity, wit and a detective's eye
for solving conundrums.--Alberto Manguel"Times Literary Supplement"
(11/27/2009)
Engrossingly mischievous...Beard takes cheeky, undisguised delight
in puncturing the many fantasies and misconceptions that have grown
up around Pompeii--sown over the years by archaeologists and
classicists no less than Victorian novelists and makers of "sword
and sandal" film extravaganzas. While many scholars build careers
through increasingly elaborate reconstructions of the ancient
world, Beard consistently stresses the limits of our knowledge, the
precariousness of our constructs and the ambiguity or contradiction
inherent in many of our sources. "There is hardly a shred of
evidence for any of it" serves as her battle cry, and it's a noble
one...This is a wonderful book, for the impressive depth of
information it comfortably embraces, for its easygoing erudition
and, not least, for its chatty, personable style.--Steve Coates"New
York Times Book Review" (03/15/2009)
In "The Fires of Vesuvius: Pompeii Lost and Found" Mary Beard
cheerfully dismantles as many assumptions about what we are looking
at in the city's remains as she constructs hypotheses. She shows
conclusively that the city was not entirely taken unawares by the
eruption.--Katherine A. Powers"Boston Globe" (12/28/2008)
In "The Fires of Vesuvius", Cambridge University classics professor
Mary Beard restores Pompeii in all its bustling everydayness...But
as vivid and detailed a depiction as Beard is able to provide, what
is equally fascinating about Pompeii is how much we do not
know...Beard calls this the "Pompeii paradox," the fact that "we
simultaneously know a huge amount and very little about life
there." That's also what makes this learned but lively account a
rather haunting read. Oddly familiar images of daily life two
millenniums distant are juxtaposed with a sense of impenetrable
mystery. "A visit to Pompeii almost never disappoints," Beard
insists. To read this book is to agree.--Marjorie Kehe"Christian
Science Monitor" (01/01/2009)
In a survey that encompasses Pompeians' religion, diet, and even
traffic patterns, Beard sets out to correct many of the
misimpressions that countless guidebooks--and guides--have foisted
on tourists...More than two centuries of tourism and excavation
have left a legacy of assumptions that cloud our understanding of
the site--and, since Pompeii contains some of the best evidence
about daily life in the Roman world, about Rome itself. "The Fires
of Vesuvius" lays out decades of specialist debate in clear,
reader-friendly prose.--Andrew Curry"Wilson Quarterly"
(05/01/2009)
In the "The Fires of Vesuvius", [Beard] gives us a wonderfully
comprehensive picture of the city that has long fascinated
historians, archaeologists and classicists...For a historian such
as Beard, drawing on the latest archaeological findings, it is
possible to write with authority how people of the first century
ate their meals and lighted their homes, earned a living, governed
themselves and attended to their bodily needs. For her--as she
shows in this book--Pompeii is not a dead but a living city.--David
Walton"Milwaukee Journal Sentinel" (12/20/2008)
It is the long vanished life of Pompeii that Mary Beard evokes in
all its detail and complexity in her new book...She gives us
Pompeii itself, with its smells and swill, its sex and
superstition, its poverty and pathos. It is a wholly successful
evocation, pieced together from a deep knowledge of a frighteningly
large bibliography.--G. W. Bowersock"New Republic" (05/06/2009)
Pompeii may still confuse and challenge, but Beard's informative
reappraisal vividly evokes the way it was. And travelers will
welcome her practical advice on making a visit.--Judith
Chettle"Richmond Times Dispatch" (03/01/2009)
As Mary Beard shows in "The Fires of Vesuvius", her marvelous
excavation of Pompeii's history, the city is rarely what it is
billed to be. A leading historian of Roman culture, a prolific
essayist and an irrepressible blogger, Beard punctures conventional
pieties about history and culture with formidable scholarly
authority, always paying keen attention to the layering effects of
the passage of time...With "The Fires of Vesuvius", Beard has
produced a lusciously detailed, erudite account of life in ancient
Pompeii...The challenge of "The Fires of Vesuvius" rests in the way
that its portrait of Pompeii overturns longstanding conceptions
about the empire to which the city belonged. Most important is
Beard's depiction of the chaotic diversity of Pompeian life--the
sheer variety of its religious experience, its linguistic
multiplicity, its class tensions--which raises far-reaching
questions about the nature of cultural and political identity in
the imperial Roman context...With its focus on labor, education and
religion, "The Fires of Vesuvius" is a testament to how much Roman
studies has to offer the contemporary political imagination.
Well-informed in the latest research in demography, the history of
Roman politics, architecture, ancient economics, feminist and
post-colonial studies, Beard probes the experience of men and
women, free and slave, rich and poor...The point that permeates
Beard's work, along with much of the best of classical cultural and
literary studies, is that part of the job of studying the past is
to examine the assumptions of each storyteller and the effect each
of their stories has, ripple-like, on the rest. Beard's depiction
of Pompeii manages to do justice to all its alien strangeness while
prompting us to reflect on the significance of felt resemblances
between its experience and our own--in the formation of cultural
identity, habits of consumption, political nepotism, religion,
sexuality, violent entertainments and much more. -- Joy Connolly
"The Nation" (11/09/2009)
In this lively survey, Beard, a classicist at Cambridge, tempers
erudition with a skepticism toward interpretive overreach. "To be
honest, this is all completely baffling," she remarks about a
painting dense with iconography. Archeological reasoning is often
ingeniously indirect--ragged drips suggest a bucket knocked from a
platform by painters fleeing the volcano--and Beard's caution makes
her an excellent guide for nonspecialists, as she explains both
what we know and how we know it with equal clarity.
In "The Fires of Vesuvius," Cambridge University classics professor
Mary Beard restores Pompeii in all its bustling everydayness...But
as vivid and detailed a depiction as Beard is able to provide, what
is equally fascinating about Pompeii is how much we do not
know...Beard calls this the "Pompeii paradox," the fact that "we
simultaneously know a huge amount and very little about life
there." That's also what makes this learned but lively account a
rather haunting read. Oddly familiar images of daily life two
millenniums distant are juxtaposed with a sense of impenetrable
mystery. "A visit to Pompeii almost never disappoints," Beard
insists. To read this book is to agree. -- Marjorie Kehe "Christian
Science Monitor" (01/01/2009)
In the "The Fires of Vesuvius," [Beard] gives us a wonderfully
comprehensive picture of the city that has long fascinated
historians, archaeologists and classicists...For a historian such
as Beard, drawing on the latest archaeological findings, it is
possible to write with authority how people of the first century
ate their meals and lighted their homes, earned a living, governed
themselves and attended to their bodily needs. For her--as she
shows in this book--Pompeii is not a dead but a living city. --
David Walton "Milwaukee Journal Sentinel" (12/20/2008)
In a grand synthesis, one of our most distinguished classicists
relates all that we know--and don't know--about ancient Pompeii,
devastated by a flood of lava and volcanic ash from Mt. Vesuvius in
A.D. 79. Beard splendidly recreates the life and times of Pompeii
in a work that is part archeology and part history. She examines
the full scope of life, from houses, occupations, government, food
and wine to sex, and the baths, recreation and religion...Beard's
tour de force takes the study of ancient history to a new level.
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