Many books, documentaries and movies claim to chronicle daily life in Ancient Rome, but it's rare to find a narrative so encrusted in detail as this lively offering from an Italian author and television host. Adopting a first person plural voice, Angela takes us on an eagle-eyed tour of the ancient city on an "ordinary day" in the year A.D. 115. Serving as a Virgil-like guide, Angela begins in a Domus, an upper-class home, exploring its meticulous inner workings, from the aqueduct hook-up to the slave labor. Out in the streets, Angela provides a fascinating, nail-by-nail description of Roman construction before schooling readers in the particulars of buying slaves. Next up is a bloody scene at the Coliseum (featuring hungry lions and their worthy meal), and a steamy sunset tour of bedrooms, salons, and sexual mores; Romans viewed sex as "a gift of the gods," something to enjoy, and would "judge our sexuality as excessively complicated... by mental complexes and roles." Angela's rigorous research and populist style, aided by Conti's seamless translation, should fascinate casual readers as well as dedicated Italophiles.
"Alberto Angela makes an important but often complicated subject fascinating and accessible. The reader is catapulted into a day in the Imperial capital and uncovers affinities, secrets, curiosities, and anecdotes about the inhabitants of ancient Rome... Angela transforms his book into a kind of three-dimensional set in which the reader strolls, visiting homes, markets, open air school, baths, and even public latrines."
Il Giornale
"One discovers a wealth of details about the curious habits of ancient Romans, from their recipes to their tastes in interior design, from life in the Insulae, the giant Roman housing projects, to the shocking slave markets."
Il Corriere della Sera
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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