SPQR

I’ll admit: I approached *SPQR* expecting another ‘rise and fall’ saga, but Beard’s audiobook ambushed me. Within 20 minutes, she’s debunking the idea that Rome was some inevitable superpower—turns out, its early ‘glory’ was more luck, theft, and ruthless PR. Nash’s narration is the perfect vehicle for this: her posh-but-punchy tone makes Beard’s academic rigor feel like a dinner party takedown. When she reads Latin inscriptions, she doesn’t just pronounce them—she *scoffs* at them, as if rolling her eyes at a pompous senator. It’s this playful irreverence that makes 18 hours fly. That said, the audiobook isn’t flawless. Beard’s tangential style—jumping from a gladiator’s diet to Augustus’s spin doctors—can feel disjointed in audio. I found myself rewinding not for clarity, but to savor a point I’d missed while laughing (her takedown of *Gladiator*’s historical howlers is worth the price alone). The production is clean, though I’d have loved more atmospheric breaks—some chapters blur together in the dense middle. But these are quibbles. What lingers is how *modern* Beard makes Rome feel: the populist rabble-rousers, the elite’s gaslighting, the way ‘civilization’ was just a brand. If you’ve ever rolled your eyes at a politician’s empty rhetoric, you’ll hear its ancient echo here. Not a ‘greatest hits’ of Rome, but a mirror—cracked, fascinating, and held up by a narrator who knows exactly when to smirk.