Lost Civilations: Pompeii Abridged

Rating:
Summary: Pompeii comes back to life for the listeners of this tape.
Review: This is a riveting tale of life in Pompeii before and after the destruction wrought by the volcano Vesuvius. While actors flamboyantly portray Pompeiian citizens, the quiet discourse of Blair Brown and David McCallum really take the listener to Pompeii and back. McCallum's velvet voice is light when describing everyday Pompeii, but his somber tones undergird the horror these citizens of the doomed city faced as they smothered in ashes. This tape is a must for the history buff!

Rating:
Summary: Great Production needs more depth
Review: This one was tough to rate. The audiobook has excellent production values; Blair Brown and David McCallum turn in their usual superb performances. A well written script clearly describes the immediacy and poignantcy of the disaster. But still, I would have liked at least another tape's worth of details about Pompeii/Herculaneum and what archaeologists have been able to piece together about Roman life in the first century AD/CE. Also some allusion to the controversy in archaeological circles about conservation of the sites vs tourism might be in order. Given this is an audio version of a Time/Life book that's probably too much to ask. I think that 5 stars for the cast and production and 3 stars for content is about right.

Rating:
Summary: Great Production needs more depth
Review: This one was tough to rate. The audiobook has excellent production values; Blair Brown and David McCallum turn in their usual superb performances. A well written script clearly describes the immediacy and poignantcy of the disaster. But still, I would have liked at least another tape's worth of details about Pompeii/Herculaneum and what archaeologists have been able to piece together about Roman life in the first century AD/CE. Also some allusion to the controversy in archaeological circles about conservation of the sites vs tourism might be in order. Given this is an audio version of a Time/Life book that's probably too much to ask. I think that 5 stars for the cast and production and 3 stars for content is about right.