I praised her Confronting the Classics: Tradition, Adventures and Innovation for naught. Her next opus is not so much a revisionist study of Rome as advertised on the cover as a hackwork (this is my imperfect translation of Russian khaltura, having no English equivalent). While most of her judgments on Roman history are sound, the book is so disjointed and garbled that its 600 pages cannot be viewed other than series of amusing anecdotes.
There is little a reader can learn from Mary Beard's about administration, economics or military affairs of the Roman Empire. Again, when she touches these subjects, her opinions--except for the military--are usually competent but there is no way one can get any coherent picture from her book.
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