Plenty of people, notes Duncan (creator of the History of Rome podcast), are familiar with the facts of the end of the Roman Republic, including Julius Caeser's dictatorship and the rise of the emperor Augustus. But far fewer could tell you about the Gaius Marius's consulships, Sulla's march on Rome, or other events that weakened the Republic. Roughly covering the 130s to the 80s BCE, Duncan makes an excellent effort at familiarizing readers with those events. He lays out a narrative of how external conflicts, internal uprisings, political corruption, and even well-intentioned movements toward reform eroded the established rules and unwritten social codes that kept the straining Republican government together. While Duncan refrains from making explicit comparisons to modern events, threaded throughout the book is the reminder that the issues that provoked Roman unrest-economic and social inequality, questions of citizenship and legal rights, and the employment of intimidation and violence as political tools-parallel issues the United States is currently grappling with. VERDICT Award-winning podcaster Duncan proves to be just as effective at working in a written medium, presenting historical personalities and complex situations with clarity and verve.-Kathleen McCallister, Tulane Univ., New Orleans © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.