The book's title evokes the majestic, the mysterious, and the familiar all at once: Roma. It's a grand epic on a James Michener scale about the first thousand years of Rome-from its beginnings as a permanent settlement along a salt trade route to the fall of the Republic and the rise of the Empire-and the central role that two founding families play in Roman history, even as the families in question, the Pinarii and the Potitii, face reversals and transformations that wind the two lineages about one another. Steven Saylor, author of the popular Roma Sub Rosa mystery series, dubs it "the story of how Rome became Rome." USA Today's Robert Bianco calls it a "history of history-of the way fact is buried by myth and of the way societies cling to traditions even when the meanings behind them are lost to memory." It's a big, complex book that effortlessly merges legend with history and novelistic structure with the always-unexpected contours of history.
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