Why is this hated so much?

Ive seen this book mentioned on this board a few times calling it a shitty book with no reasons why. I don't give a shit about roman history, I'm just curious why Veeky Forums hates this book so much.

Because memes basically.

Because she's an IYI stupid imbecile.

Because she’s more interested in forcing contemporary political comparisons than retelling history straight. She’s a hack.

I'm about halfway through pic related I'm really enjoying it so far. What does Veeky Forums think of this book?

Because politics

Because the only thing people have read of hers are a couple of tweets about that BBC darkie cartoon saga

Inevitably when academics try to do complete histories their writing is always very front-loaded towards their particular area of expertise at the expense of everything else. So, the stuff in SPQR dealing with the late Republic and very early Empire is great, but she obviously doesn't know much about the latter half of the second century onwards and it shows.

Stopping at the Antonine Edict feels pretty arbitrary but it's probably just as well, considering she was starting to flounder in terms of her analysis around that part anyway.

I don't know anything about the book but:

>2018
>female "academic"

It can't but be terrible.

Beard has an expressed dislike for military history and mostly steers clear of the grand political narratives that are preferred by this board. The book does a good job of outlining how knowledge is acquired regarding roman history, it's open about how archeological evidence and non-textual sources are used to develop an understanding of Rome that isn't just derived from written histories.

In general the book focuses more on cultural aspects of Rome, though service is paid to political aspects. It fairly short for what it is, spanning a great deal of time and is heavily oriented towards the very early Roman period which is interesting but leaves the Imperial period somewhat underdeveloped, especially post-Augustus. Ultimately it just isn't the kind of history that Veeky Forums wants to read for the most part and so it gets a bad rap. I'd take it as a capable book for examining cultural aspects of roman life and outlining how we know what we know and what things can't be known.

It's not a grand political narrative and it's not trying to be, there are plenty of those already. The book should be used with others too provide a better overall understanding. There are major failing of the book and it's definitely rushed towards the end but it fills a useful niche and shouldn't be discounted. No one book is going to provide everything you need to know on a subject.

Because she defended some black characters in Rome and throughout history in a BBC kid's cartoon and it triggered the alt-right. I have no idea if she's wrong or right, but the alt-right has now decided she's a leftist pushing a narrative and everything she writes is suspect.

In the reality, there are a few kind of forced references to the current era, but not a ton or any specifics, and it mostly focuses on historiography with a smattering of archaeology.

And which university are you the professor of Classics at again?

She is everything wrong with post-modern academia, the caricature of the charlatan hack. The J.K Rowling of Classics.

Why does she not like military history? Seems like an important aspect of the Roman Civilization.

This
>no reasons why
Liar

can someone post some quotes from it here? I want to laugh at what is apparently a shit book written by a shit author.

You really do have to laugh at angry teens who know about as much about the Classics as the average chicken screeching shrilly she is a hack because they want to deny the reality that there were brown skinned people in the Roman Empire.

>2018
>appealing to authority

Great argument

This.

She's a revisionist and radical feminist.

this

"Toxic masculinity"

I'm not joking.

>she's a hack!!!!
>but she's a highly regarded professor at a prestigious university
>REEEEEEEEEEE FALLACY REEEEEEEE

>highly regarded

Lots of "highly regarded" professors and authors have been rightfully completely forgotten. It means jack shit.

If she were highly regarded by her peers she wouldn't write for the common rable

To my knowledge there are actually many classicists who don't explicitly enjoy military history. It probably boils down to the fact that "military history" is rather limiting. You can discuss the where, when, hows and why of a battle or war, how it changed the political course of a nation's history and the cultural aftereffects, but it's still a rather shallow field when compared with wider historical, economic and cultural narratives. There are certainly military historians of the ancient world, but most classicists recognise that military history is only one part of Ancient Greece and Rome and treat it accordingly.

People that go out of their way to avoid military history are unironically beta as fuck.

Really, are we going to add le Mary Beard threads to the Threads We Have Every Day group on Veeky Forums?

Mary Beard, Holocaust, and Barbarossa. Veeky Forums's holy trinity of b8.

She's a well known """historian""" so it's fair game to discuss her. At least the posts about her actually contain discussions of real history, and not retarded fanfictions like Holocaust and Anne Frank posts.

Thank goodness that your test has nothing to do with your skill as a historian.

>if modern academia approves it, then it's ok
>I only respect what modern academia respects
t.useful tool

That's a genuine Appeal to Authority though.

Military history isn't as limited as you might think, after all it's one of the oldest types of historiographical study. In fact I often find works of military history to be more comprehensive than those of social or cultural history.

Consider Hugh Elton's seminal work 'Warfare in Roman Europe, 350-425 AD'. It deals with the military first and foremost but it also contains loads of useful information about language, culture, society, customs, law, etc.

I think historians like Beard who gloss over battles like "and then a battle happened at x and y won" are doing themselves a disservice, though I suppose they probably don't have the tools to properly analyse them.

I also enjoy reading military histories and recognise that their writers don't just talk about the wars and battles themselves. For example my favorite account of any war is from Robert Massie's "Philip the Great." Good historians realise that wars weren't fought in a vacuum just like they recognise that you can't tell the history of the Greeks and Romans without talking about events like the Peloponnesian or Punic Wars.
At the same time, I think it's important to differentiate between "military histories" and the study of "military history," because the later, like you said, is a specific type of historiography with its own skillset, merits and limits.

...

Personal preference maybe?

That's pretty funny.

Dont forget the constant racist "why has Africa never produced anything of note" threads

Because Mary Beard has proven herself to be a hack political actavist who simply uses history as a tool to force her stupid douchebag old hippie labour views on the world. The final straw was when she unironically defended pic related, and then whined about being "harassed" when people mocked her on twitter for it.

She appears regularly on british tv simply to shill the same cookie cutter basic bitch ideas that those in power want, mostly "muh refugees" bullshit. She also said America deserved 9/11 a few weeks after it happened.

>but she's a highly regarded professor at a prestigious university

Exactly. None of that carries any weight in 2018. It just means you're a woman or a liberal. Academia today is the greatest enemy of truth and knowledge since Mao went full tard during the cultural revolution. In other words being a "highly regarded professor at a prestigious university" today means you know absolutely nothing, refuse to know, and are actively trying to subvert and destroy genuine achievement and knowledge others have worked for.

It's the greatest argument against your quality as a human being, yet alone an educator. These people are the absolute bottom of the barrel shit and they are inherently untrustworthy.

>shitty appeal to authority
lol. Shes in the same camp as fucking David Irving.

Ty high school educated middle American

>. In other words being a "highly regarded professor at a prestigious university" today means you know absolutely nothing, refuse to know, and are actively trying to subvert and destroy genuine achievement and knowledge others have worked for.

>Non-Academics don't do this.
"Hurdurr I no book learn. Mean I right!"