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Mary Beard

Biography

Mary Beard

A professor of classics at Cambridge University, Mary Beard is the author of the bestselling THE FIRES OF VESUVIUS and the National Book Critics Circle Award–nominated CONFRONTING THE CLASSICS. A popular blogger and television personality, Beard gave the Mellon Lectures at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and is a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books. She lives in England.

Mary Beard

Books by Mary Beard

SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome
by Mary Beard - History, Nonfiction

Ancient Rome was an imposing city even by modern standards, a sprawling imperial metropolis of more than a million inhabitants that served as the seat of power for an empire that spanned from Spain to Syria. Yet how did all this emerge from what was once an insignificant village in central Italy? In SPQR, world-renowned classicist Mary Beard narrates the unprecedented rise of a civilization that even 2,000 years later still shapes many of our most fundamental assumptions about power, citizenship, responsibility, political violence, empire, luxury and beauty.