Michael Kulikowski is the author of Rome’s Gothic Wars, Late Roman Spain and Its Cities, and The Triumph of Empire (Harvard). Kulikowski has appeared in a number of documentaries on the History Channel, including Barbarians Rising, Rome, and Criminal History: Rome, and writes frequently for the Wall Street Journal and London Review of Books. He is the Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of History and Classics at Pennsylvania State University.
As Kulikowski presents it, the end of the Roman Empire in the West
was mean and dirty—and thoroughly Roman…In a brilliant tour
d’horizon of the West from Ireland to the Black Sea, he measures
the effect of the fall of Rome on the world beyond Rome.
*New York Review of Books*
A tour de force history of the inner workings of the late Roman
Empire. Kulikowski tells a vivid, compelling story of the humans
who fought to control the machinery of the empire until the entire
system could no longer hold.
*Kyle Harper, author of The Fate of Rome*
Kulikowski pairs his comprehensive understanding of late Roman
politics with an uncanny eye for spatial and material details as he
reconstructs an empire in a downward spiral of self-destruction.
Roman emperors and barbarian kings, pagan aristocrats and Christian
bishops, loyal soldiers and self-serving condottieri are woven into
the brilliantly dramatized story of The Tragedy of Empire.
*Noel Lenski, author of Constantine and the Cities*
Kulikowski’s lively and engaging account brings clarity to the
murky world of the late Roman Empire. It lets us understand the
endless infighting between imperial hopefuls, the profound reforms
of Diocletian, and the social transformation that expressed itself
in Christianity. It explains the many forces which led to the
western empire’s disintegration and expertly guides us through a
post-Roman world which was eventually to give rise to modern
Europe.
*Jerry Toner, author of Infamy: The Crimes of Ancient
Rome*
Michael Kulikowski tells the story of the Roman Empire from the
fourth to the sixth century. He writes boldly and fluently about
imperial politics, incorporating the latest scholarship yet
avoiding getting bogged down in academic controversies. Highly
recommended as an introduction to the political history of this
period.
*Hugh Elton, author of The Roman Empire in Late
Antiquity*
Kulikowski’s tale is complex, and frequently bloody, with dynastic
intrigue, Persian wars, assassinations, usurpations, religious
disputes, barbarian incursions, and repeated civil wars… A very
valuable overview and analysis of the knotty question of why the
empire ‘fell’ in the west, while it survived in the east.
*StrategyPage*
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