Roman Conquests: Gaul Hardcover – February 2, 2012

This book is an excellent introduction to the Roman conquest of Gaul. The majority of the text centers on Caesar's campaigns for two reasons: 1) the most detailed source we have about the conquest of Gaul is Caesar's "De Bello Gallico," and 2) Caesar conquered the vast majority of Gaul (earlier Roman leaders only conquered a small portion of southern Gaul). Of note is the fact that the author is evenhanded in his treatment of Caesar and Roman society in the first century B.C.E.

Only thing I would have liked to see is more maps and diagrams interspersed along with the narrative to help in visualizing the campaigns without referring to the few maps in the beginning of the book.

I can't praise this book highly enough it captured my imagination and fed my hungry brain with digestible information from both sides of the conflict and believe me on the Gaul side there is a lot of it. Every tribe, their leaders, locations and tactics are all brought in to the picture as one by one they are subdued by Roman charm, sword or siege and it is in the latter that the Romans excelled culminating in one of history's most brutal, Alesia.Of course all of this was masterminded by one man, military genius, cunning politician, and hard as roman nails he shaped the world we live in now and was light years ahead of anyone or anything to be found in the world BCE so it's not surprising the book takes a lot of information from his The Gallic Wars but the author ( Michael M. Sage ) is not afraid to say when he thinks things have been spiced up or actions have become difficult to explain because our genius is being deliberately vague. What a pity our man was cut down by a bunch of cowards we may have got another conquest out of him and another brilliant book out of Mr Sage.

Interesting subject, and the basic story is good, but spoiled for me by elementary editing errors. I find it very distracting from the main narrative if the same character is spelt several ways in a few pages, and I hope others in the series will be better, as the concept is attractive.

For my grandson

This book provides a fascinating view of what it meant to live on the wide-ranging and highly diverse frontiers of the Roman empire. The author provides a plausible analysis of the Roman frontier system

As a Dane I was interested to read about the Cimbri & Teutones, who travelled 'Tour de Europe' for new land. But this was not America and their story ended heroic - but sad. Travelling much in France I have seen many of the places mentioned in the book, but Alesia I think is the most interesting. One has to visit the place, where Vercingetorix faught Cæsar in 52 BC.