Michael Kerrigan (6)Besprekingen

Ok, I liked this book but the title is false. It does not continue through to the fall of Rome. It spends about a chapter on each Emperor (unless they didn't last long which happened often) until Elagabalus was killed in 222 C.E. Then the next 190 years are glossed over in a 4 page Epilogue. What? That's leaving out a whole lot of interesting and Dark stuff, and not even a mention of Constantine. Did the author hit his page limit and just stop? What is going on here, I feel cheated, like half my book is missing.

While I feel cheated I did still enjoy the book. I don't believe everything I read here, because this series deals in gossip and rumor. Other books in the Dark History series I read, where I'm more educated on the subject matter, have passed a lot of untrue or questionable facts off as matter of fact. But it was interesting enough that I plan to read up on the subject further to get a more complete and accurate picture.

I would very much enjoy reading the second half of this book that doesn't exist, but since it doesn't I'll have to deal with being entertained with what I've been given and I was.

Why not both?

An easy-to-follow, well a illustrated overview of the rulers of Rome which includes a bunch of the much-neglected later emperors. Some of those later emperors tried hard to hold together the empire, counterbalanced by others who were crazier than Caligula on a Saturday night. Many of the illustrations are from medieval paintings, with variances from actuality noted. A simple chart listing the emperors, perhaps with short, supplementary nights, would've been nice, just to keep score. Good, light pop history.

World War II Plans That Never Happened was a fun read. Fun because although I had previously read about some of the plans, as I was reading through the book, I had quite a few ‘ha!’ moments as I came across one I had not heard of. A few of those are right out of left field and you had to wonder what the people coming up with them were thinking but then again, desperate times call for desperate measures.

Michael Kerrigan has assembled a fascinating collection of events that never happened and I feel confident as a voracious reader that any historian will find a few in here they never heard of, let alone imagined.

Kerrigan has used a chronological format so you can see how during the early years of the war, some of the plans were more far fetched than later on; showing how the Allies were ready to try almost anything. Surprisingly in my mind, the Axis plans seemed to make more sense overall – odd when you consider how they seemed willing to try more advanced projects during the war.

Overall, I can easily suggest this book to the avid military historian and warn that they do not be fooled into thinking that they have probably heard of they all before.

www.daniellittle.com½

This is an interesting read, which features the different emperors of the Roman Empire. Since the subject of the Roman Empire is a vast one, don't expect to find a lot of history about the Roman Empire in this book. It tends to feature more of the eccentric characteristics of the different emperors.

I did enjoy it, though, partly because it helped to put the empire into more of a context for me. Before reading this book, I was only vaguely aware of the Roman Empire in history and hadn't read a lot about it or know much about its formation or the demise, and this book did clarify the vastness of the empire.