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How Rome Fell: Death of a Superpower. By Adrian Goldsworthy. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2009. 544 pages. $32.50. Reviewed by Dr. J. Boone Bartholomees, Jr., Professor of Military History, US Army War College.
Adrian Goldsworthy, the prolific young Oxford-trained classicist, has produced yet another great book about the Roman empire, this one focused on its decline and fall. The subtitle, "Death of a Superpower," is somewhat awkward, if not misleading. One expects a thesis-probably radical-on superpower demise using Rome as an example with perhaps advice (if only implied) for modern US policymakers; however, Goldsworthy expressly rejects that model. He believes the situations of ancient Rome and the modern United States are so radically different that lessons from Rome's decline have little direct applicability today. In fact, as if to downplay the topic, the subtitle is not shown on the dust jacket or spine, although it is on the inner dust jacket flap and the title page. Likewise, it is significant that the title is How Rome Fell, not Why Rome Fell.
Instead of offering advice, the author explains in some detail the decline and fall of the western Roman empire. He dismisses debate regarding the utility or precision of terms, such as 'decline' and 'fall,' as academic nitpicking (my term, not his), and instead offers a fairly comprehensive review of the Roman empire in the third through fifth centuries. In that review Goldsworthy finds no single cause for the fall of Rome. Like George Pickett, who is reputed to have responded to a...