Well, I finally finished The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, after the better part of a year. Generally I read this for about 15 minutes a day before moving on to more fun stuff, so that's why it took me so long.

The sheer scope of this book is astonishing - Gibbon covers something like 1300 years of Roman history, from the days of Julius Caesar to the fall of Constantinople at the hands of the Ottoman Turks. We learn about the rise of Christianity and Islam, we learn about the barbarian hordes who spent centuries cutting off little pieces of the Empire for themselves, and we see the once-mighty Roman Empire crumble into dust over the years. That Edward Gibbon was able to put this together in the eighteenth century, without modern research tools, the Internet, etc., is truly astonishing, especially considering he was a member of Parliament at the time.

However, this is probably also the book's greatest weakness. The enormous reach of its author also means that, most of the time, I felt like we were just skimming the surface of a particular emperor or time period. Honestly, I felt like I would have gotten more out of the book if I had already had more knowledge of the people and places Gibbon was writing about. Those parts of the history I did already know about, I enjoyed reading more.

Also, this book reads more like an academic text than a real populist history book a la David McCullough, and the prose is a little archaic, but it's certainly readable if you can keep your attention from wandering. Just be warned that this is not a light, breezy summer read - it's heavy-duty, educational, and filled with historical research.