Fifty-eight real stories from young travelers abroad offer the budget, independent, and youth traveler vivid first-person accounts of the countries and experiences of backpackers, students, and sojourners. Offering more than just traveling facts, this guide actually invites readers to see, taste, and experience European adventures-from sneaking into Rome's Coliseum to running with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain.
The dream Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar shared of uniting Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East in a single community shuddered and then collapsed in the wars and disasters of the sixth century. Illegal migrations of peoples, religious wars, global pandemics, and the temptations of empire: Rome's end foreshadows our own crises and offers hints how to navigate them, if we will heed this story.
In this lavishly illustrated and arresting study, Warwick Ball reveals Rome's fascination with the East and the dramatic influence of Near Eastern culture on the Roman world. He explains Rome's obsession with the Eastern world as a desire for the new over the old, of the mundane over the exotic; a love affair that even took literal form in the story of Antony and Cleopatra.
