"A masterpiece." Michael Korda, The Daily Beast "Enthralling" Maureen Dowd, The New York Times "A work of literature." Judith Thurman, The New Yorker Publisher's Marketplace Best Nonfiction of 2010.Entertainment Weekly's Best Nonfiction of the Year.The Daily Beast's Top 5 Nonfiction Books of 2010.
Washington Examiner's Best Books of 2010.NPR's Alan Cheuse's "Best Books of Winter".Michiko Kakutani's Top Ten Books of 2010.The New York Times Book Review's Top 10 Books of the Year.Seattle Times's Best Biographies of 2010.Rich in detail, epic in scope, Schiff's is a luminous, deeply original reconstruction of a dazzling life. In a masterly return to the classical sources, Stacy Schiff here boldly separates fact from fiction to rescue the magnetic queen whose death ushered in a new world order a generation before the birth of Christ.
Along the way the supple personality has been lost. Michelangelo, Tiepolo, and Elizabeth Taylor put a face to her name. Shakespeare and Shaw put words in her mouth. Cleopatra has lodged herself in our imaginations ever since.įamous long before she was notorious, Cleopatra has gone down in history for all the wrong reasons. The two would together attempt to forge a new empire, in an alliance that spelled their ends.
Already she was the wealthiest ruler in the Mediterranean the relationship with Antony confirmed her status as the most influential woman of the age. Cleopatra had a son with Caesar and-after his murder-three more with his protégé. They happen, however, to have been Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, two of the most prominent Romans of the day. Cleopatra appears to have had sex with only two men. Ultimately she dispensed with an ambitious sister as well incest and assassination were family specialties.
She waged a brutal civil war against the first when both were teenagers. She was married twice, each time to a brother. Though her life spanned fewer than forty years, it reshaped the contours of the ancient world. Above all else, Cleopatra was a shrewd strategist and an ingenious negotiator. Her palace shimmered with onyx and gold, but was richer still in political and sexual intrigue. One of the New York Times' '10 Best Books of 2010'
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