Subtitle promises a broader study than the book actually delivers. ( )

Good bio of the short-reigned emperor who tried to revive paganism which avoids the trap of making him an Enlightenment poster boy and attempts to see him in his own terms. Some annoying clusters of typos towards the end, and it could have done with some maps and a family tree. ( )

From the meager facts available, a good rendering of the last pagan emperor. Of course, the miracle is that he survived until adulthood. ( )

A history of Julian, only emperor of Rome for 18 months before he was killed in battle by an unknown source. The author tries to sort through all the embellishment and all the legend to get as close to the real man as possible; this is difficult, since he has become such a symbol: a symbol of evil for many Christians, and a symbol of freethought for many enlightenment thinkers. The real Julian was neither. He was an ordinary man raised to an extraordinary position who managed to leave his mark on history in spite of a rather mediocre set of accomplishments as emperor. He did this by bringing Paganism back to the post-Constantine Roman Empire. We are fortunate that many of Julian's writings have survived, which makes his story a bit easier to piece together, but it is still with caution that the author posits his idea of who killed the young emperor. The author writes with a lively, readable style, though there are some real clunkers in editing that lead to misplaced commas and strange sentences. Still, that seems to be the norm these days, and this book has fewer than most. Overall, a decent treatment of Julian that tries to avoid the mythologizing. ( )