Pompeii: A guide to the ancient city

By Salvatore Ciro Nappo

Book Overview

Pompeii was a city of great prosperity and culture, a favorite resort for wealthy Romans. In a span of forty-tow hours it was buried beneath layers of volcanic ash. This illuminating volume captures... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0760712352
• ISBN13: 9780760712351
• Release Date: January 1998
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble Books
• Length: 166 Pages
• Weight: 2.25 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A treasure trove of all things Pompeii ... at a bargain basement price

It's unfortunate that this wonderful and informative book was, until recently, sitting on my bookshelf collecting dust. What a treasure trove! This is right up there with Robert Etienne's "Pompeii: The Day a City Died" as a guide full of colorful illustrations, detailed descriptions of various Pompeii settlements (in standard English), and the full letter of Pliny the Younger to his friend Tacitus of the horrible cataclysmic eruption of August 24-25, 79 CE, detailing the eruption itself (which remains the only in-depth account of what happened), his uncle's death from the noxious gases that came from Vesuvius and the after-effects on him and the entire area, both emotionally and geographically (it pained him to remember it so many years later, as Pompeii and Herculaneum collected grass and was starting the millenium-plus cycle of being completely forgotten). Salvatore Nappo did an excellent job of putting everything Pompeii down into one book. This coffee-table book is definitely worth the time to read - or to just look at the many beautiful pictures contained within.