A survey of the revolutions of empires. CONTENTS: The Tour--Meditations--The Apparition--The Hemisphere--Condition of man in the Universe--Original state of Man--Principles of Society--Source of the evils of Society--Origin of Government and Laws--General causes of the prosperity of Nations--General causes of the prosperity and ruin of ancient States--Lessons taught by ancient, repeated in modern Times--Will the Human Race be ever in a better condition than at present?--Grand obstacle to Improvement--New Age--A free and legislative People--Universal basis of all Right and law--Consternation and conspiracy of Tyrants--General assembly of the people--Investigation of Truth--Problem of religious contradictions--Origin and genealogy of religious ideas.

The Roman Empire has been a source of inspiration and a model for imitation for Western empires practically since the moment Rome fell. Yet, as Julia Hell shows in The Conquest of Ruins, what has had the strongest grip on aspiring imperial imaginations isn’t that empire’s glory but its fall—and the haunting monuments left in its wake. Hell examines centuries of European empire-building—from Charles V in the sixteenth century and Napoleon’s campaigns of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries to the atrocities of Mussolini and the Third Reich in the 1930s and ’40s—and sees a similar fascination with recreating the Roman past in the contemporary image. In every case—particularly that of the Nazi regime—the ruins of Rome seem to represent a mystery to be solved: how could an empire so powerful be brought so low? Hell argues that this fascination with the ruins of greatness expresses a need on the part of would-be conquerors to find something to ward off a similar demise for their particular empire.

First paperback edition of one of E. P. Thompson's best and most deeply felt works.

Erkkila's aim is to repair the split between the private and the public, the personal and the political and the poet and the history that has governed the analysis and evaluation of Whitman and his work in the past.