Cullen Murphy's Are We Rome?

Cullen Murphy's Are We Rome?: The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America is definitely worth reading, particularly if your knowledge of Roman history is lacking (click here to view all my posts about this book).

I don't know enough about Roman history to properly evaluate the points Murphy makes but I still found it interesting. Murphy writes for the average person and not the highly educated scholar.

Murphy is clearly well-read and appears to have done substantial research for this book. I was surprised by how often he mentioned other books. Some of the books he mentioned are:

• Colossus by Niall Ferguson - "I believe the world needs an effective liberal empire and that the United States is the best candidate for the job" and America's best and brightest "aspire not to govern Mesopotamia but to manage MTV; not to rule the Hejaz but to run a hedge fund."
• Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
• Dark Age Ahead by Jane Jacobs - "The collapse of one sustaining cultural institution enfeebles others . . . . With each collapse, still further ruin becomes more likely."
• City of God by Augustine
• Satyricon by Petronius
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
• The Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
• Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
• Cato: A Tragedy in Five Acts by Joseph Addison
• The Crucible by Arthur Miller
• Life of Washington by Parson Weems
• Democracy: An American Novel by Henry Adams
• Caesar & Cleopatra by George Bernard Shaw
• Political Arithmetick by William Petty
• Roman History by Ammianus Marcellinus
• The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire by Edward Luttwak
• The Soldier and the State by Samuel Huntington
• This Kind of War by Colonel T. R. Fehrenbach - "You may fly over a land forever; you may bomb it, atomize it, pulverize it and wipe it clean of life -- but if you desire to defend it, protect it, and keep it for civilization, you must do this on the ground, the way the Roman legions did, by putting your young men into the mud."
• Corruption and the Decline of Rome by Ramsay MacMullen - "the privatization of power" or "the deflection of public purpose by private interests."
• Daily Life in Ancient Rome by Jerome Carcopino
  
• The Shadow Government by Daniel Guttman and Barry Willner
• Holy Fire by Bruce Sterling
• Blow the House Down by Robert Baer
• The Annals of Imperial Rome by Tacitus
• The Quiet American by Graham Greene
• The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas L. Friedman
• My Year in Iraq by L. Paul Bremer - I'd really like to read this
• The Old Social Classes & The Revolutionary Movement of Iraq by Hanna Batatu
• Roman History by Cassius Dio
• Puck of Pook's Hill by Rudyard Kipling
• Mexifornia by Victor Davis Hanson
• Waiting for the Barbarians by J. M. Coetzee
• Childe Harold's Pilgrimage by Lord Byron
• Why Most Things Fail by Paul Ormerod

The breadth of Murphy's sources is astonishing. He even quoted video games such as Rome: Total War and several movies -- including Mario Puzo's The Godfather, Gladiator, and Spartacus.

I found that I enjoyed this book immensely at the start but found my interest wavering as I got further into the book. But Murphy concludes this book rather succinctly with what he calls the "Titus Livius 100-year Workout Plan":

1. Instill an appreciation of the wider world, including creation of immigration-friendly policies and an increase in the number of Americans who are fluent in another language.
2. Stop treating government as a necessary evil and instead rely on it proudly for the big things it can do well.  Examples include nurturing business, reducing poverty, Social Security, and guaranteed student loans.
3. Fortify the institutions that promote assimilation (public services for illegal immigrants).
4. Take some weight off the military and national service.

I wonder what Murphy thinks of the current financial crisis....hmm....

Click here to read an excerpt from Are We Rome? or click here to view the table of contents.

The Secret Life of Words by Henry Hitchings

I just read about The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English by Henry Hitchings in this article from The Economist and I've got to get a copy!

Hitchings is also the author of Defining the World: The Extraordinary Story of Dr Johnson's Dictionary, which I also want to read after I first heard about it in Charles McGrath's New York Times Book Review "A Man of Many Words" published December 4, 2005. William Grimes also reviewed it in the New York Times here; click here to read the first chapter of Defining the World.

Though I don't know much about it, I've always been fascinated by the history of language -- one thing I liked about Cullen Murphy’s Are We Rome? was learning how we use words derived from words the Romans used).

And as the review from The Economist mentions, the history of words is the history of culture:

All this is another way of writing history. The Arab etymologies of “saffron”, “crimson” and “sugar” speak of England’s medieval trade with the Arab world. We have “cheque” and “tariff” from this source too, plus “arithmetic” and “algorithm”—just as we have “etch” and “sketch” from the Dutch, musical terms from the Italians and philosophical ones from the Germans. French nuance and finesse are everywhere. At every stage, the book is about people and ideas on the move, about invasion, refugees, immigrants, traders, colonists and explorers.

I hope my local library has a copy!

Are We Rome?: The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America by Cullen Murphy

With the upheaval in the financial markets these past few weeks, it's been especially interesting to read Cullen Murphy's Are We Rome?: The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America (click here to view all my posts about this book). I had high expectations for this book and I have not been disappointed.

Murphy begins by telling readers how the Roman emperor Diocletian and his imperial entourage can be easily compared to President George W. Bush and his entourage:

• mensores: advance men who requisition supplies and arrange for security
• protectores: imperial bodyguards / secret service
• comitatus: caravan / all people in the Executive Office of the President
• pragustatores: food-tasters / undercover agents who purchase food supplies anonymously at American supermarkets
• nomenklatura: name-callers of emperor's visitors
• haurs pices: oracles who interpret entrails of sheep
• augurs: oracles who interpret the flight of birds

He also explained that the thumbs-down sign originated from the gladiatorial turned thumb sign "pollice verso" before eventually summarizing the six parallels between Rome and America that Murphy focuses his book on:

1. How Americans see America, particularly how those in Washington view Washington itself.
2. Military power: the shortage of manpower and the widening cultural and social divide between military social and civilian society.
3. "Privatization" (and "corruption") and the fading distinction between public and private responsibilities and resources.
4. How Americans view the world.
5. Borders.
6. The inevitable complexity that comes with being a large empire/country.

I'll write more after I get further along, but in the meantime thought I would share this typical George W. Bush quote that Murphy used to illustrate the consolidation of power in the executive branch that has happened in the past 8 years:

I'm the commander -- see, I don't need to explain  . . . . I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation.

Click here to read an excerpt or click here to view the table of contents.