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How Rome Fell: Death of a Superpower. By Adrian Goldsworthy. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2009. ISBN 978-0-300-13719-4. Maps. Illustrations. Glossary. Bibliography. Notes. Index. Pp. x, 531. $32.50.
Adrian Goldsworthy, a respected military historian, disagrees with recent scholarship on Late Antiquity which prefers the idea of the transformation of the Roman Empire to that of decline and fall. Goldsworthy addresses general readers, not an academic audience, but this is not the usual popularization, for Goldsworthy takes a careful and cautious approach to the sources. He not only points out their deficiencies but is ready to say that some questions cannot be answered for lack of evidence. Designedly, he names only a few scholars but examines the theories of many. His aim is to write a narrative about the politics and wars of the period, including other aspects only when they are relevant to the fall of Rome.
Goldsworthy sees Rome as a "superpower." Neither the Parthian Empire nor the later Persian Empire in the East nor the barbarian tribes in the West were...