The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

The first volume of Decline and Fall was published in 1776, the year of American Independence, and by the time the final volume appeared in 1787 Gibbon had produced an exhaustive, million-and-a-half-word account of a 'revolution which shall ever be remembered and is still felt by the nations of the earth'. But who has got time to read such a vast work today? Here, this masterpiece of the Enlightenment has been cut down to a manageable size, complete with scabrous and entertaining footnotes ...