The Secrets of Rome: Love and Death in the Eternal City

By Corrado Augias

Book Overview

From Italy's popular author Corrado Augias comes the most intriguing exploration of Rome ever to be published. In the mold of his earlier histories of Paris, New York, and London, Augias moves perceptively through twenty-seven centuries of Roman life, shedding new light on a cast of famous, and infamous, historical figures and uncovering secrets and conspiracies that have shaped the city without our ever knowing it. From Rome's origins as Romulus's stomping ground to the dark atmosphere of the Middle Ages; from Caesar's unscrupulousness to Caravaggio's lurid genius; from the notorious Lucrezia Borgia to the seductive Anna Fallarino, the marchioness at the center of one of Rome's most heinous crimes of the post-war period, Augias creates a sweeping account of the passions that have shaped this complex city: at once both a metropolis and a village, where all human sentiment-bravery and cowardice, industriousness and sloth, enterprise and laxity-find their interpreters and stage. If the history of humankind is all passion and uproar, then, as the author notes, "for centuries Rome has been the mirror of this history, reflecting with excruciating accuracy every detail, even those that might cause you to avert your gaze."

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0847829332
• ISBN13: 9780847829330
• Release Date: April 2007
• Publisher: Rizzoli Ex Libris
• Length: 432 Pages
• Weight: 1.59 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.8" x 1.6" x 5.6"

Customer Reviews

Secrets of Rome

This is a very interesting book, one of the best that I have read on Rome. It is not a guide book with an in depth narration of several sites and personages. A must read!

The Secrets of Rome Love & Death in the Eternal City

this is an excellent translation of the erudite work by Corrado Augias of the history of Rome. Through a series of stories Augias transports the reader between the past and present, in what seems a first hand account of the history of this great city. the chapters can be read as individual essays, and the footnotes make for great reference for interested readers. I can see a Secrets of Rome Part II in the future.