Vendor
	Fritz Agency Christian Dittus
Original language
English

THE FATE OF ROME

Kyle Harper

Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire

Here is the monumental retelling of one of the most consequential chapters of human history: the fall of the Roman Empire. THE FATE OF ROME is the first book to examine the catastrophic role that climate change and infectious diseases played in the collapse of Rome's power?a story of nature's triumph over human ambition.

Interweaving a grand historical narrative with cutting-edge climate science and genetic discoveries, Kyle Harper traces how the fate of Rome was decided not just by emperors, soldiers, and barbarians but also by volcanic eruptions, solar cycles, climate instability, and devastating viruses and bacteria. He takes readers from Rome's pinnacle in the second century, when the empire seemed an invincible superpower, to its unraveling by the seventh century, when Rome was politically fragmented and materially depleted. Harper describes how the Romans were resilient in the face of enormous environmental stress, until the besieged empire could no longer withstand the combined challenges of a little ice age and recurrent outbreaks of bubonic plague.

THE FATE OF ROME provides a sweeping account of how one of history's greatest civilizations encountered and endured, yet ultimately succumbed to the cumulative burden of nature's violence. The example of Rome is a timely reminder that climate change and germ evolution have shaped the world we inhabit?in ways that are surprising and profound.

Kyle Harper is professor of classics and letters and senior vice president and provost at the University of Oklahoma.

FATUM
Das Klima und der Untergang des Roemischen Reiches
Deutsch von Anna Leube und Wold Heinrich Leube
[ HC C.H. Beck 03/2020]

Available products
Book Published 2017-10-01 by Princeton University Press

Comments

This is the story of a great civilization's long struggle with invisible enemies. In the empire's heyday, in 160 CE, splendid cities, linked by famous roads and bustling harbors, stand waiting for the lethal pathogens of Central Africa and the highlands of Tibet. Yet, under the flickering light of a variable sun, beneath skies alternately veiled in volcanic dust or cruelly rainless, this remarkable agglomeration of human beings held firm. Harper's account of how the inhabitants of the empire and their neighbors adjusted to these disasters is as humane as his account of the risks they faced is chilling. Brilliantly written, at once majestic and compassionate, this is truly great history. -- Peter Brown, author of Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350550 AD

In this riveting history, Kyle Harper shows that disease and environmental conditions were not just instrumental in the final collapse of the Roman Empire but were serious problems for centuries before the fall. Harper's compelling and cautionary tale documents the deadly plagues, fevers, and other pestilences that ravaged the population time and again, resulting in far more deaths than ever caused by enemy forces. One wonders how the empire managed to last as long as it did. -- Eric H. Cline, author of 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed

The Fate of Rome is a genuine milestone in the study of the Roman world?exciting, innovative, even revolutionary. Drawing on a wide range of scientific evidence, from ancient climate to DNA records, and skillfully merging it with more conventional historical sources, Kyle Harper firmly guides Roman history into the twenty-first century -- Walter Scheidel, The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century

Italy: Einaudi; Taiwan; Spain: Critica; France: Decouverte; China

Kyle Harper is a Gibbon for the twenty-first century. In this very important book, he reveals the great lesson that the decline and fall of the Roman Empire can teach our own age: that humanity can manipulate nature, but never defeat it. Sic transit gloria mundi. -- Ian Morris, author of Why the West Rules--for Now

There is much to absorb in this significant scholarly achievement, which effectively integrates natural, social, and humanistic sciences to show how the fall of the empire caused the decline of Rome. (starred review)