Jürgen Leonhardt

Academics often struggle when trying to present their specialities to general readers. It can be done in engaging fashion without talking down to the readers. Simon Schama manages it (such as in Citizens), as did MacCulloch in his history of Christianity and the non-academic Ross in The Rest is Noise. These were long books which required patience to read, but the effort was very much worthwhile.
This book is also a specialist history, though it is much less engaging than those books until the final chapter. Suddenly it came alive in the last 15 pages, ironically in a chapter which argues for much less formality in the teaching of Latin, and for the recognition of Latin as it was lived rather than a stiff concentration on the semi-scientific teaching of grammar. (If only my school Latin teacher had taken that approach in the 1960s...) I sympathise with the author, having written another form of specialised history - it's so hard to recognise one's own specialist short cuts and to explain them.… (más)