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How to Be a Bad Emperor : An Ancient Guide to Truly Terrible Leaders (Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers)
If recent history has taught us anything, it's that sometimes the best guide to leadership is the negative example. But that insight is hardly new.
About How to Be a Bad Emperor : An Ancient Guide to Truly Terrible Leaders (Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers)
If recent history has taught us anything, it's that sometimes the best guide to leadership is the negative example. But that insight is hardly new. Nearly 2,000 years ago, Suetonius wrote Lives of the Caesars , perhaps the greatest negative leadership book of all time. He was ideally suited to write about terrible political leaders; after all, he was also the author of Famous Prostitutes and Words of Insult , both sadly lost. In How to Be a Bad Emperor , Josiah Osgood provides crisp new translations of Suetonius's briskly paced, darkly comic biographies of the Roman emperors Julius Caesar, Tiberius, Caligula, and Nero. Entertaining and shocking, the stories of these ancient anti-role models show how power inflames leaders' worst tendencies, causing almost incalculable damage. How to Be a Bad Emperor is both a gleeful romp through some of the nastiest bits of Roman history and a perceptive account of leadership gone monstrously awry. We meet Caesar, using his aunt's funeral to brag about his descent from gods and kings—and hiding his bald head with a comb-over and a laurel crown; Tiberius, neglecting public affairs in favor of wine, perverse sex, tortures, and executions; the insomniac sadist Caligula, flaunting his skill at cruel put-downs; and the matricidal Nero, indulging his mania for public performance.
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How to Be a Bad Emperor : An Ancient Guide to Truly Terrible Leaders (Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers) is available as an audiobook on Apple Books. We haven't confirmed it on Spotify yet — but you can still search there below.
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More by Suetonius
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- Is How to Be a Bad Emperor : An Ancient Guide to Truly Terrible Leaders (Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers) on Apple Books?
- Yes — How to Be a Bad Emperor : An Ancient Guide to Truly Terrible Leaders (Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers) is available as an audiobook on Apple Books.
- Who wrote How to Be a Bad Emperor : An Ancient Guide to Truly Terrible Leaders (Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers)?
- How to Be a Bad Emperor : An Ancient Guide to Truly Terrible Leaders (Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers) is by Suetonius.
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