The problem with being a Rome Girl TM (not a girl) is that family members think they can get Roman pop history books for me and they’re wrong.

Is this accessible and a relatively unbiased (aka: hates everyone equally) overview of 130-43* BCE? Sure. Did it tell me anything I didn’t already know? No, and it skipped over a lot of bits I did know.

But I try to rate books as what they’re trying to be, not how disgruntled they made me, so it loses a star for uncritically taking some VERY CONCERNING BITS OF ROMAN HISTORY at face value: rampant orientalism, less rampant but still present attitude towards Gauls as being primitive alcoholics, outright stating that there was a sex discrepancy in Roman nobility due to the high rate of infanticide for female babies [CITATION NEEDED].

*Holland doesn’t seem to be clear on whether he wanted to end with the Ides of March, Cicero’s death, Philippi, Actium, or 27 BCE. The narrative moves steadily along to 15 March 44 and then suddenly we’re doing massive time jumps through the 30s to wind up at 27.