BOOK REVIEW: 'Carthage Must Be Destroyed' by Richard Miles

When we remember ancient Carthage in modern textbooks and documentaries, it’s usually seen through the lens of Roman dominance, a warped shell of a culture with little more to do in history but fall to the greatest power of the ancient world.

Richard Miles takes the title of his detailed exploration of the rise and fall of the Carthaginian city-state from the declaration of Roman statesman Cato the Elder: “Carthage Must Be Destroyed.” Carthage and Rome can’t exist in the Mediterranean together. This town ain’t big enough for the both of us, so let’s run them out before they run us out.

It’s a tale as old as civilization. Cultures compete, they clash, the victor writes the histories. It is with this understanding that Miles sets out to chronicle the true history of the power that nearly toppled a young Roman Republic, using sources from throughout the ancient world to document the roots and ascent of Carthage, followed by its legendary clashes with Rome in the Punic Wars, and finally its devastation at the hands of the Romans in 146 BC.

Perhaps the greatest accomplishment of Carthage Must Be Destroyed is its completeness. Miles’ ambitious agenda is to chronicle not just Carthage as it relates to the rise of Rome (the dominant perspective of many historical texts), but Carthage as it relates to the whole of the Western world at the time. Carthage, he shows us, was a vibrant power all its own, and very nearly triumphed in the Punic clashes. It’s astounding, though not surprising, that Carthage’s tremendous influence over the Mediterranean world during its heyday is not looked upon with more significance. Miles is a gifted historian with the storytelling power to explain not only how this happened, but why it happened, and why it matters.

Though you might find yourself reading through the book’s early chapters with a desire to get on to the wars, the ultimate result of Carthage Must Be Destroyed is a rewarding, fully formed historical text with the power to reinvigorate interest in a lost empire and add color to the already vibrant field of ancient history. For fans of tomes devoted to the ancient Western world, Carthage Must Be Destroyed is sure to become indispensable.

BOOK REVIEW: 'Shock Value' by Jason Zinoman

In the mid 1960s, horror films started changing. The creature features and camp classics of the past three decades were fading, and in their place were arising new and brutal visions of uncompromising vision. Wes Craven (known best now for his work on the Scream franchise) made his debut with the unflinching and bloody The Last House on the Left, George A. Romero produced his indie classic Night of the Living Dead and Roman Polanski lent cinematic and artistic credibility to the genre with the satanic tale Rosemary’s Baby. Together, this unlikely trio helped give birth to something Jason Zinoman calls “The New Horror.”

Shock Value is Zinoman’s attempt to produce a cohesive, analytical history of The New Horror, from its roots in the early films of Craven and Romero, to its peak in films like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Halloween and its eventual decline as films like Friday the 13^th became carbon copies and spoofs of an age of originality and primal creative energy. 

Shock Value  would be entertaining enough as a simple chronology of The New Horror age, charting its rise and fall through the films that made it great and the filmmakers who made it them. It would be interesting enough to hear how Tobe Hooper made The Texas Chain Saw Massacre with very little money in the midst of stifling Southern heat, or how Roman Polanski defied the odds and produced both a commercially and critically successful horror film with Rosemary’s Baby, or how John Carpenter defined a genre with Halloween. But Zinoman isn’t satisfied with stopping there.

Shock Value is a thoroughly detailed and well-written history of a fascinating segment of modern horror cinema, but it’s also a revelatory analysis of a genre that’s often taken for granted. Zinoman isn’t just interested in the popularity of these films, but in why they were popular, what they did right, and what was so scary about them. From the often overlooked Black Christmas to the perennial “scariest movie of all time” The Exorcist, Zinoman digs deep to find the details about the films, and the filmmakers, that matter most both to their initial success and their eventual status as classics.

The conclusions he reaches aren’t always original, but the way they’re presented is both unique and surprisingly insightful. Shock Value presents an understanding of the nature of evil and the masochistic pleasure that millions of viewers take from seeing it portrayed on film. But Zinoman is eloquent in pointing out that there’s more than masochism at stake. There’s a kind of psychological freedom at work in these films, and Shock Value is as much about the shock of that freedom as it is about the value of it.

Even if the depth of horror cinema isn’t something you’re interested in, Shock Value is an entertaining, highly accessible piece of commentary. Few writers could say so much in so brief a span, and few books could leave the reader having so much fun.

BOOK REVIEW: 'No Rest for the Dead,' or How 26 Bestselling Authors Can Manage Astounding Mediocrity

No Rest for the Dead is a well-paced, competent thriller groaning under the weight of a marketing gimmick for the ages. Whatever promise it might have had is shrouded in the bulky cloud of writers looming over its 250 or so pages, and the result is a book that comes to a close with an emphatic shrug. It’s not an uncommon trait in the oversaturated thriller market, but it is both improbable and sad when you consider the all-star cast recruited to produce this book.

A roster of writers including Jeffery Deaver, Sandra Brown, J.A. Jance, Diana Gabaldon, Kathy Reichs, Faye Kellerman and R.L. Stine team up to tell the tale of the murder of Christopher Thomas, a notoriously arrogant museum curator who turns up dead and rotting in an iron maiden in a German museum in the late 1990s. Suspicion immediately lands on his wife, Rosemary. All the usual symptoms are there: he wasn’t exactly faithful, they quarreled right before he disappeared, and so on. Rosemary is tried, convicted and executed for the crime thanks to the work of Detective Jon Nunn.

Cut to ten years later. A memorial service is about to be held in memory of Rosemary Thomas. Jon Nunn’s life is in shambles. He drinks heavily, he lost his wife, and the thought that he may have wrongly convicted (and thus killed) Rosemary haunts him. As the anniversary of her death draws closer, Nunn sets out to re-examine the case, to find other suspects, to prove himself wrong and exorcise his demons.

It’s a short, lightning fast book, the kind that you almost don’t remember when you’re done, and this might be its chief selling point. You get to say you read something by all of these authors at once, you might even finish it in one sitting, and by purchasing it you support a good cause (more on that later). These are all (except for the not remembering part) good things when it comes to thrillers, but what makes No Rest for the Dead so disappointing is the squandered potential.

There’s nothing bad about this book, but there’s tragically nothing very good about it either. The characters are interesting enough to follow but probably not interesting enough to care about, the plot is sufficient but not gripping, the pace is fast but not white-knuckle all-nighter fast, and the writing is passable but so bland that you might forget you’re reading the work of dynamos in the field. Everything is editorially glossed over to flow together, and while individual styles do peek through now and then, the talent often gets lost in the shuffle.

Proceeds from the book are going to The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, which is in itself a reason to buy the thing (or you could just send them a donation), but good causes aside, this book could have really been something. Where’s the ambition? Where’s the seizing of the chance to get 26 of the hottest writers on the planet together and do something unforgettable? Where’s the most outrageously unpredictable and grandiose thriller plot in human history? No Rest for the Dead is by no means the work of hacks, but it could have been the work of masters.