Pompeii
Historical fiction about the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD from the perspective of Marcus Attilius, an aquarius (hydraulic engineer) responsible for Aqua Augusta, the regional aqueduct.
Stats for nerds
3recommend
7mentions
5people
2010–2025years
71% recommend29% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- For anyone interested in this topic: Author Robert Harris really did his homework for his historical fiction novel Pompeii, which follows the story of a water engineer in many of the towns around the bay and on the slopes of Vesuvius just before the eruption. Besides the archaeological and geological records, there are several surviving eyewitness accounts including that of Pliny the Younger not to mention Roman histories of various emperors who spent time in this area and events such as the revolt of Spartacus.
- If you want to read a fantastic historical fiction novel that covers these events (including Pliny the Elder's rescue mission) seek out Pompeii by Robert Harris.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/76010/pompeii-by-ro...
- Reading the classics often make me feel we achieved very little improving our base instincts in the last 2000 years.
Robert Harris has a number of pretty cool historical fiction books about Cicero (Imperium, Pompeii, Conspirata) that are a good read also and put much of the goneby times in context.
- You should check out Pompeii, a historical fiction novel by Robert Harris. The main character is an engineer responsible for waterworks.
- Pompeii, by Robert Harris.
It's historical fiction, and one of the best reads I've had in a while. I particularly liked the descriptions of the aquarius debugging the waterworks.
- I haven't seen the movie, but I have read the book a couple of years ago, published in 2016, and I presume you could get the same information from there.
It's not really a secret how a pope is chosen, it's just not something most people are interested enough to look up (there's a missing "in" in that sentence but I couldn't decide where to put it).
Robert Harris wrote the book and also wrote Fatherland, Enigma and Pompeii. Those are three different books but I'd definitely read a book with that single title.
