“The political machinations, betrayal, and battles may appeal to those fans of George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series interested in a real-world game of thrones.” - Booklist
One of Italy’s most revered cultural figures reconstructs the extraordinary life of the legendary Cleopatra at the height of her power in this epic story of passion, intrigue, betrayal, and war.
Our world today would not be the same without Cleopatra. While she is one of the most famous figures in history, the legendary Egyptian queen remains, in many ways, an enigma. In this mesmerizing history, Alberto Angela offers a fresh and dynamic portrait of this extraordinary ruler, revealing a strikingly modern woman born in an ancient era and skilled in the art of diplomacy and war, who would conquer the heart of a general — Marc Antony — and Rome itself.
Cleopatra focuses on a twenty-year period that marked a sweeping change in Roman history, beginning with the assassination of Julius Caesar that led to the end of the Republic, and ending with the suicides of Antony and Cleopatra and the birth of the Augustan Empire. Angela brings the people, stories, customs, and traditions of this fascinating period alive as he transports us to the chaotic streets of the capital of the ancient world, the exotic port of Alexandria in Egypt, and to the bloody battlefields where an empire was won and lost.
Alberto Angela (born 8 April 1962 in Paris) is an Italian paleontologist and scientific popularizer.
He accompanied his father, the well-known Italian TV announcer Piero Angela, on his trips ever since he was a child, something that allowed him to learn many European languages and to appropriate a cosmopolitan culture. After being a student in France, he enrolled in a course of Natural Sciences at the University "La Sapienza" of Rome, finally graduating with 110/110 and a prize for his thesis. He studied different courses of specialization also in an American university. Once out of university he started working in the research field participating in paleoanthropologic digs in various places in the world, among which Zaire, Ishango, Tanzania, Olduvai and Laetoli, Sultanate of the Oman, Mongolia, and the desert of the Gobi. In 1988 he published an essay on the new techniques of interactivity in scientific museums, entitled Musei (e mostre) a misura d'uomo. Come comunicare attraverso gli oggetti. Together with his father he has written various books of scientific subjects: La straordinaria storia dell'uomo (Mondadori, 1989), La straordinaria storia della vita sulla Terra (Mondadori, 1992), Il Pianeta dei Dinosauri (Mondadori, 1993), Dentro al Mediterraneo (Mondadori, 1995), La straordinaria storia di una vita che nasce - 9 mesi nel ventre materno (RAI-Eri-Mondadori, 1996), Squali (Mondadori, 1997), Viaggio nel Cosmo (Mondadori, 1998).
As a journalist, he has collaborated with various daily papers and periodicals, among which La Stampa, Airone, Epoca.
On television programs, he has conceived and written together with his father Il pianeta dei dinosauri, transmitted by Rai Uno in 1993; he is one of the authors of the tv program(s): Superquark, Quark Speciale, and Viaggio nel cosmo for Rai uno. He is author of the program Passaggio a Nord Ovest, on Rai Uno. In 1998 he was commentator in the field in the Italian version of the series of documentaries "Big Cat Diary" devoted to the great African feline, entirely realized in co-production between RAI and BBC and for this program, he stayed in the reserve of Masai Mara, in Kenya. He was the conductor, together with his father, of the program Ulisse, from 2001 on Rai Tre, for which he won the Premio Flaiano for television. In 2002 he was attacked and robbed by bandits while filming a tv program, in the desert of Niger.
He is a member of the Italian institute of Human Paleontology (Rome), and of the Centro Studi e Ricerche Ligabue(Venice).
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