Should-Read: Donald A. Yerxa: AN INTERVIEW WITH BRYAN WARD-PERKINS ON THE FALL OF ROME http://www.webcitation.org/6O3GYBfS1?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bu.edu%2Fhistoric%2Fhs%2Fperkins.pdf: "'AT THE HOUR OF MIDNIGHT THE SALERIAN GATE WAS silently opened, and the inhabitants were awakened by the tremendous sound of the Gothic trumpet...
...Eleven hundred and sixty-three years after the foundation of Rome, the Imperial city, which had subdued and civilized so considerable a part of mankind, was delivered to the licentious fury of the tribes of Germany and Scythia.” The emotion and drama that flowed so eloquently from Edward Gibbons’s pen has been largely drained from our contemporary historical imagination. Recent scholar- ship has drastically transformed the subject that fascinated students of history for centuries, and Oxford historian Bryan Ward-Perkins fears that something important is being lost...