![]() ![]() In recent decades, however, this invasion hypothesis has been deconstructed. After hundreds of years of trying, the marauders finally broke through in the fifth century CE, and, like drunken party guests, wrecked a civilization. Once upon a time, the story goes, the Roman Empire was destroyed when its ability to repel wave upon wave of barbarian hordes was finally worn down. by Oxford.) As such, it can be considered a piece of counter-revisionism. (First published by Macmillan in Britain in 2009, it has just been issued in paperback in the U.S. Seven hundred pages and two decades in the making, Empires and Barbarians has the heft of a generational statement. ![]() What we really get here is a survey of what used to be called "the Dark Ages." It's a deeply suggestive one, not only an explanation of 500 years of history, but a model for thinking about the demographic dynamics of peoples much closer to home. Actually, the subtitle of the book - "the Fall of Rome and the Birth of Europe" - is misleading as the author says explicitly, the former is only peripherally in his purview. I make no pretense toward familiarity with the historiography of the Roman Empire, whether early or late (I know little more about the Republic than either). This book was supposed to be summertime leisure reading. His new book, Sensing the Past: Hollywood Stars and Historical Visions, is slated for publication by Oxford University Press later this year. Jim Cullen, who teaches at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in New York, is a book review editor at HNN. ![]()
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