Author and historian Tom Holland returns to his roots in Roman history and the audience he cultivated with Rubicon—his masterful, witty, brilliantly researched popular history of the fall of the Roman republic—with Dynasty, a luridly fascinating history of the reign of the first five Roman emperors.
Dynasty continues Rubicon’s story, opening where that book ended: with the murder of Julius Caesar. This is the period of the first and perhaps greatest Roman emperors. It’s a colorful story of rule and ruination, from the rise of Augustus to the death of Nero. Holland’s expansive history also has distinct shades of I, Claudius, with five wonderfully vivid (and in three cases, thoroughly depraved) emperors—Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero—featured, along with numerous fascinating secondary characters. Intrigue, murder, naked ambition and treachery, greed, gluttony, lust, incest, pageantry, decadence—the tale of these five Caesars continues to cast a mesmerizing spell across the millennia.
Download and start listening now!
“Narrator Derek Perkins’ strong voice, clipped accent, and brisk pacing keep the narrative vivid and energetic. His reading makes the history into something between a news dispatch and a compelling novel—it’s anything but dry—and he has the intelligence to deliver handily both the historical detail and Holland’s interesting interpretations of character…This is lurid popular history built on a solid intellectual frame, and Perkins has the gifts to handle all of it.”
—
AudioFile