Mary Beard is well known for being a very good communicator, as well as a classicist. Her style is down-to-earth and she doesn’t slow down for technicalities or academic language. While accessible, it’s not arrogant, nor do I feel she debases her exposition or arguments. She’s “here” to let most people understand a bit better how it was back then, and do it in an entertaining way. If her intent was to help a layman better understand the culture, life and way of thinking found in Rome during the period the book covers, and I do think so, then she did a great job.

This means, though, that I think that some people will expect something else from it. She does explain where lots of her evidence comes from, but that doesn’t stop her expressing her opinions and suppositions. I think that’s one of the strengths of the book, but if someone expects a more traditional re-telling of Rome (even if updated to modern historiography), then they’ll probably end up disappointed.

That said, in case it wasn’t already clear, I did like it a lot. I believe more popular history books should focus more on trying to put us in the state of mind of the people living then, helping us understand why they did what they did, than just telling what happened. If on the side I get a glimpse of the ideas in the head of a renowned classicist, well, I’ll happily take that too.

I found a couple of odd things here and there, and even if small, I feel like mentioning one. She says early on

Modern historians often lament how little we can know about some aspects of the ancient world. ‘Just think of what we don’t know about the lives of the poor,’ they complain, ‘or of the perspectives of women.’ This is as anachronistic as it is deceptive. The writers of Roman literature were almost exclusively male; or, at least, very few works by women have come down to us (the autobiography of the emperor Nero’s mother, Agrippina, must count as one of the saddest losses of classical literature).

Which by itself sounds a bit weird to me. Modern historians can lament a lot about not knowing about things. They lament it because, in this case, they don’t have those perspectives due to the reasons Beard mentions, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a very reasonable complaint. So reasonable, in fact, that Beard herself comes close to lamenting it in a later chapter, when talking about the non-elite and poor Romans.

The book is narrated by Phyllida Nash. She does a great job, even if sometimes, while reading texts in Latin I felt she slipped a bit into Ecclesiastical instead of Classical pronunciation. But even if that’s so, she still did a great job nonetheless (even in these quotes I must say) And yes, in the worst case this is a level of pedantry that this book probably doesn’t deserve .

As with other similar audiobooks, though, there are no “attached” maps, drawings, graphical timelines or even suggested readings that one can find in the printed book. This is a big omission, and even though I do recommend the book and really like Nash’s narration, it leads me to recommend the printed book instead (or both together).

Big recommendation to anyone remotely curious History, Rome, or even how cultures perceive themselves and change over time.

Naomi Klein Not to be confused with Naomi Wolf. By the way, another great recommendation (the linked book, not Ms Wolf). gave a brief history of the changes in marketing that corporations had been doing mostly through the 90s. Starting with Marlboro Friday, at the low point of the prestige of branding in the eyes of the people in the industry, and continuing through the great advances of the following years, she studies well how corporations managed to start selling “lifestyles”. She then does a quick run through the highlights of 90s capitalism.

In three lines, the gist of the book, except for the last part, is The book used to have the slogan No Space, No Choice, No Jobs, which are also the big divisions in the book. :

• Corporations, in their push to sell us their brands, started occupying more and more of what had been, until then, untainted public space.
• They then used their power to crush competition and eliminate small, local businesses.
• All this while outsourcing increasing amounts of jobs to developing countries where employees are exploited.

Klein does go into detail and expands each of these points. For each of them she brings extensive research and social critique. Klein is a great journalist and writer. Not only does she defend her thesis well enough, but she also does it in a way that doesn’t sound clinical or preachy.

Writing this in 2026, in what I basically consider another step of global capitalism, the feeling is weird. On one side, a lot of it is like reading an old history book, because partly that’s what it is. Yes, the 90s were about 20 years ago Live with it. . On the other, things are not better today, but corporations have been so successful, I feel, that we’re less actively conscious of these issues than we were briefly at the beginning of the 2000s. The invasion of public (and previously private) space has advanced even more, corporations are even more anticompetitive, and outsourcing and having products made by exploited people is something that is widely accepted. A book on the same topic written today, or even 5 years ago, would probably include a big part on more recent developments, but that doesn’t mean all of this is not still very relevant.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is, if you want to understand the world we live in a bit better, do read this book. Or hear it (more on that just below). Of course this won’t give you the whole picture, but I don’t think there’s any book that will.

The 10th Anniversary Edition is, as far as I know, mostly the same as the original one. It includes an introduction by the author in which she comments on some developments from the 2000s. Brands are (were) more prevalent everywhere, to the point that some corporations tried to sell by using their brand less… as their brand. She also comments on how quickly and naturally the book itself became a brand in the world we live in. And finally, she comments on how branding also crept into American politics All this reminded me how at some point, suddenly, everything in Spanish politics revolved around the “Marca España”, the “Spain brand”. The effects were certainly not as negative as in the American example, but I don’t think I have seen any good report or even commentary on how negatively it affected public discourse. .

I “read” it as an audiobook. It’s narrated by Nicola Barber, who does a pretty good job. Last year I heard Klein reading her own Doppelganger, something that I can’t but recommend For the second time already in this review. , but Barber does a pretty good job too Well, she’s apparently an award-winning, probably famous, voice actor, so very probably I’m not discovering a hidden gem. I can’t but agree with those awards, though. .