Hacker News Books

Great books to start:

- Rubicon by Tom Holland
- SPQR by Mary Beard
- Dynasty by Tom Holland
- Caesar by Adrian Goldsworthy (more of a bio on Julius C, a bit drier than the above, has section on Alesia)

By the time they were post guy in Scotland, those guys would have been Gauls or Brittons, with a general who had maybe been to Italy once. You may enjoy SPQR by Mary Beard if this is your sort of thing.

Seeing Like a State, James C. Scott

Grit, Angela Duckworth

SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome, Mary Beard

Deep Work, Cal Newport

SPQR by the same is a good book for gaining an understanding of what Rome was. One of my takeaways from it is that mapping a contemporary term to something similar from the past is a tricky thing and can lead to poor interpretations.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0108U7IHO/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...

I've been doing audiobooks on commute for the last year or so and have particularly enjoyed these as well:

* anything by & narrated by Bill Bryson

* The Phoenix Project

* We Are Legion (We are Bob)

* SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome

* The Adventure of English: The Biography of a Language

(A peculiar title ...)

I'll leave aside the professional historians, but if we're tossing in story telling like Tom Holland's, I'd put in a good word for John Maddox Ford's (also named) SPQR series - a dozen or so stories about a fictional character inserted in the critical final years of Roman republic. Best hard-nosed, not excessively modern look at those times I've come across.

Some good ones I read this year:

- _SPQR_, by Mary Beard. Engaging book surveying the history of ancient Rome, mostly Republic and early Empire if I recall correctly.

- _To Explain The World_, by Steven Weinberg. History of physics from the ancients to about the time of Newton. Don't skip the technical notes! Actually do the problems!

- I reread _Wolf Hall_, by Hilary Mantel, it was as good as I remember. This time through, I also spent some time on the Internet tracing the histories of the major characters before and after the events of the book, and it really enhanced my appreciation of it. (I also read, for the first time, its sequel, which was fine but not quite as good.)

Such a stylus was featured in a short story set in Cicero's time (he even shows up at the end).

[spoilers]

It's "Mightier than the Sword", by John Maddox Roberts, a historical mystery tale. The triangular shape of the criminal's stylus is key, and he's caught when the investigator asks to borrow it:

"Actually, I didn't really forget my own stylus today." I took it out. "You see, the common styli are round or quadrangular. Mine, for instance, is slightly oval in cross-section." Cicero and his friends drew out their own implements and showed them. All were as I had described. Cicero's was made of ivory, with a silver scraper.

(Part of the writer's SPQR series - I find them well researched and not leaking too much of the modern mindset into classical times.)

For those interested in historical topics, I would recommend Mary Beard's recent "SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome" (https://www.amazon.com/SPQR-History-Ancient-Mary-Beard/dp/08...) and Barbara Tuchman's classic on WWI, "The Guns of August" (https://www.amazon.com/Guns-August-Pulitzer-Prize-Winning-Ou...).