"Caesar: A Biography"

Caesar: A Biography (Christian Meier)

Here's a weird book: An extremely dry, dense, philosophical biography of Julius Caesar. The author starts the book with the unusual choice of criticizing Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon (as a selfish action) and it's over 50 pages before Caesar is born. Unfortunately, I can't recommend this book at all; The tone is so dry, with no quotes and basic matter of fact textbook-style narration, that even the most interesting material is rendered as lifeless as dust. The author also bizarrely begins with an in-depth discussion of Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon that assumes fairly extensive knowledge about the political, social, and military context of the time, but then proceeds thirty pages later to explain the most basic facts about Rome, such as, for example, what the Senate is, and who the Knights are. I found myself skipping pages, reading a few dull paragraphs, and going back to skipping pages until just putting the book down.
One good point: The exceedingly dry tone does occasionally entertain, as when the author notes that "Modern scholars are skeptical about Caesar's claims" that he is descended from Venus.
Grade: F