The Complete Pompeii - Joanne Berry

(Thames & Hudson), 2013  256 pp., £14.95 pp., ISBN 978-0-500-290927

Originally published in 2007, this paperback edition of Joanna Berry's authoritative and lucid account of the rise and fall of Pompeii has been published to coincide with the British Museum exhibition, Life and death: Pompeii and Herculaneum that opened on 28 March, an exhibition that I profitably visited in early April.  The destruction of Pompeii in 79 AD, the building submerged under layers of pumice and its people smothered by the subsequent pyroclastic flow was well reported by contemporary Roman writers.  Yet the site remained hidden until its rediscovery in the eighteenth century.  In fact, its destruction paradoxically ensured its later survival.  Today, Pompeii is one of the best known and most visited archaeological sites in the world and is along with the lesser-known Herculaneum perhaps the most important civil Roman site.  I found that when I visited Pompeii a decade ago during a very hot August, it was difficult to see the wood from the trees and I would have benefitted from having this readable and lavishly illustrated book as a guide.  Yet it is so much more and thoroughly deserves its title of The Complete Pompeii.  Divided into nine chapters, it takes the reader from the destruction of the town and its rediscovery and subsequent archaeological excavations through how the town evolved, what people lived there, its public and private buildings and its religious and economic life.  Joanne Berry has an encyclopedic knowledge of the site and its history and she conveys this knowledge with effortless ease and in elegant prose.  It is one of the best books I've read on Pompeii and certainly the most practical.