The
Ghosts of Cannae
Robert L. O'Connell
The epic battle that saw a massive Roman army turned into something "in excess of six million pounds of human meat left to rot in the August sun" of Cannae gets the full treatment here in what is essentially a general history of the Second Punic War. O'Connell's focal point is Hannibal's famous victory in 216 BC, but he also goes on to describe Rome's comeback (which he casts as the revenge of Cannae's survivors, the
legiones Cannenses being the "ghosts of
Canne"), and the battle's legacy,
which he sees as having opened
the door for the eventual destruction of the Republic, with Publius Cornelius Scipio (later Africanus) playing the role of man on horseback. An accessible study aimed at non-specialists, but still the kind of thing only likely to appeal to hardcore fans of military history.
Previously
|
August
30: added my review of Matt
Duggan's Cherry
Electra
August
23: added my review of
Rabindranath Maharaj's The
Amazing Absorbing Boy
August
16: added my review of Misha
Glenny's McMafia
ABOUT
GoodReports.net (originally Alex Good's Book Page)
was originally launched as a personal home page containing some of my book reviews. The site in its current
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