This wildly entertaining new history of Rome uses the lives of 21 women to upend our understanding of the ancient world, from the acclaimed author of A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.

This is a history of women who caused outrage, led armies in rebellion, wrote poetry; who lived independently or under the thumb of emperors. Told with humor and verve as well as a deep scholarly background, A Rome of One's Own highlights women overlooked and misunderstood, and through them offers a fascinating and groundbreaking chronicle of the ancient world.

The history of Rome has long been narrow and one-sided, essentially a history of "the Doing of Important Things." And as far as Roman historians have been concerned, women don't make that history.

From Romulus through the political stab-fest of the late Republic, and then on to all the emperors, Roman historians may deign to give you a wife or a mother to show how bad things become when women get out of control, but history is more than that.

Emma Southon's A Rome of One's Own is the best kind of correction. This is a retelling of the history of Rome with all the things Roman history writers have relegated to the background, or designated as domestic, feminine, or worthless.