Revolutions - Special Announcement: Mike Duncan Inks a Book Deal

Episode Date: October 12, 2015

This is a real thing that is actually happening: http://www.adweek.com/galleycat/podcast-host-mike-duncan-inks-book-deal/110975

And welcome to a special announcement. Mike Duncan, inks a book deal. So all is well, and the family is great, but I've just gotten another piece of very good news that is already leaking out into the world. So I'm just going to go ahead and announce it right now. I have signed a deal with public affairs to write a book. As you may have guessed from the nostalgia-soaked intro music, it's a book about Roman history. Specifically, the period in Roman history from 135 BC to. 80 BC. That is the turbulent 50 years between the rise of the Grockye brothers to the triumph of

Sala. It is called the Storm Before the Storm, the beginning of the end of the Roman Republic. I could not be more excited. There is a link at Revolutionspodcast.com to a little write-up and ad week about the deal. I've also attached that link to the episode itself. I think everyone should click on it and take a quick scan. I would love to make the traffic for what is in every way an utterly routine publishing announcement bafflingly high for whoever is monitoring the metrics over at ad week. So the genesis of the book actually comes from some of you out there who are always asking me to compare Rome to America. Is America Rome? If so, are we following a similar trajectory? If so, where are we on the timeline? I have always deflected those questions, but I finally decided to

put my brain into it, and I determined that if America is anywhere, it must be somewhere in the late 2nd century BC. After the Great Wars of Conquest that saw Rome emerge as the dominant superpower of the Mediterranean world, but before the rise of the Caesars who toppled the Republic. So then when I zoomed in and really started looking at this period, I discovered the parallels between Rome in the late 2nd century BC and America in the early 21st century are downright spooky. There's rising economic inequality, increasing political polarization. This is when the military starts to privatize and professionalize. There's endemic, social, and ethnic prejudice, rampant crony corruption at the highest levels of government, unpopular military quagmires abroad, and at home ruthless ambition

unmoored from traditional restraints. And of course, a rigid unwillingness of the men in power to do anything to reform the system in time to save it. But despite the extraordinary relevance of this period of Roman history, it is an age badly neglected by contemporary authors. There are hundreds of books out there on the market that, cover the fall of the Roman Republic. But these books invariably focus on the story of Julius Caesar and Pompey the Great, Cicero, Cato, the younger, Brutus and Cassius, Mark Antony, Cleopatra, and Augustus. It is a good story, but it has been told and told and told again, and we're not quite there yet. Meanwhile, the equally thrilling, chaotic, frightening, hilarious, and riveting

story of the generation that preceded the famous last generation of the Republic is ignored, despite being just as complex and fascinating and far more relevant to contemporary readers. So the storm before the storm will be a narrative history, because narrative history is what I do. It will tell the story of the men who very nearly wrecked the Republic when Julius Caesar was still just a kid bumming around the Subura, a period opened by the violent populism of the Groghye, and closed by the bloody conservatism of dictator for life Sulla, who thought that his triumph over the Marians, the bloody terror he unleashed and the political reforms he implemented would guarantee the Republic's survival. But as we know, his violent power grab merely provided a blueprint for Julius Caesar and his rivals to follow a generation later when they destroyed the Republic once and for all.

It is in fact a marvel that the Republic lasted long enough for the Caesars to bring it down. So there's no official timeline for publication, but just know that when I return from the break and get back to work on revolutions, Behind the scenes, I will also be hard at work on the storm before the storm, the beginning of the end of the Roman Republic. It feels great to be diving back into Rome, and I hope that when the time comes, you will not only buy the book, but love the book.