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Review title: Liberals in the Academy require chastising.
Product review: A beginner or university student encountering this book would come away merely confirmed in the idea--though probably not converted to it--that the Roman Republic and Empire emerged not from a superior genius for civilization but as a miraculous by-product of the avarice of its leadership. Or is miraculous the right word? Absent throughout is any of the wonder or awe that have inspired interest in this subject since its first historians, and without which any history of the civilization is not only flawed, but false, and, at this late date, dishonest. Military campaigns, whether the most ancient or more modern, are often characterized as exercises in brutality; the governing classes are generally treated as no more than class-war caricatures--an impression as often as not insinuated by rather sneering asides and related effects. Etc. A depressing book.
