The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization

I'm looking forward to reading the book, The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization by Bryan Ward-Perkins, especially after being impressed so much some years back by one of Jack Whyte's fiction books about Camelot, where he went into vivid description of how the leaders in a British hamlet struggled to keep their culture intact after they were cut off from Roman civilization upon the collapse of the empire. How the memories of a high culture faded away as the paved roads were cracked by weeds, and how diminishing resources brought out the fear and selfish desperation in people, making it hard to keep them bound together in a sharing community. And how, eventually, the community had to give up on maintaining some of its higher standards, especially those involving education and arts, when in the struggle to survive people no longer remembered the finer things of life.

Bryan Ward-Perkins' nonfiction work on this collapse of civilization in the fifth century will hopefully give us insights we can use today when (unseen and unacknowledged by many) the very foundations of our own civilization might be in jeopardy.

This is one of my reasons to do volunteer work for our local arts council, writing grant proposals to keep the joys of creative efforts alive for our community and those who visit us. We can make a difference.