A lively pocket history of the Roman Republic’s collapse—and its unsettling echoes in our own political moment. Americans are obsessed with Rome. Billionaires and manosphere pundits wax on about its military might, its gladiators, its emperors, its greatness. But we’re telling ourselves the wrong story.

In this sharp, eye-opening account, classics professor Michelle Berenfeld redirects our gaze. The Roman Empire isn’t the lesson—the Roman Republic is. 

Berenfeld’s argument is both clarifying and urgent: Rome’s slide into autocracy was not inevitable—and neither is ours. Smart, spirited, and packed with revelatory detail, Lessons from a Lost Republic is a wake-up call two thousand years in the making, a reminder that the republic is ours to protect.

224 pages