Any travel guide to Rome will urge visitors to go the Colosseum, but none answers a simple question: Why is it called the Colosseum?The History of Rome in 12 Buildings: A Travel Companion to the Hidden Secrets of The Eternal City is compelling, concise, and fun, and takes you behind the iconic buildings to reveal the hidden stories of the people that forged the Roman Empire.Typical travel guides provide torrents of information but deny their readers depth and perspective. In this gap is th...

"Brilliantly crafted to draw leadership lessons from history, this is one of the finest leadership books I have read" (Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of Team of Rivals).Leaders are always trying to get better, but sometimes the best way to move forward is to look back. Philip Barlag shows us that Julius Caesar is one of the most compelling leaders of the past to study—a man whose approach was surprisingly modern and extraordinarily effective. Caesar proved by...

Nero fiddled while Rome burned. As catchy as that aphorism is, it's sadly untrue, even if it has a nice ring to it. The one thing Nero is well-known for is the one thing he actually didn't do. But fear not, the truth of his life, his rule and what he did with unrestrained power, is plenty weird, salacious and horrifying.And he is not alone. Roman history, from the very foundation of the city, is replete with people and stories that shock our modern sensibilities. Evil Roman Emp...

Eternally fascinating, Julius Caesar was a leader ahead of his time whose grassroots, front lines leadership still has much to teach us 2000 years after his death.History is littered with examples of tyrants, hopelessly out of touch with the plight of the commoners, ruthlessly pursuing their own ambitions or hedonistic whims. But Caesar was a different kind of leader. Despite some bad press, in fact he never saw himself as above the average Roman citizen. Although he certainly knew...

Any travel guide to Rome will urge visitors to go the Colosseum, but none answers a simple question: Why is it called the Colosseum?The History of Rome in 12 Buildings: A Travel Companion to the Hidden Secrets of The Eternal City is compelling, concise, and fun, and takes you behind the iconic buildings to reveal the hidden stories of the people that forged the Roman Empire.Typical travel guides provide torrents of information but deny their readers depth and persp...