The Tiber and the Potomac
Rome, America, and Empires of Trust

This was an amazingly great course. Madden's thesis that the American empire resembles the Roman empire is of course, not new, but the way he characterizes the two entities as a separate kind of empire (different from a (merely) commercial empire or an empire of conquest), and the specific instances......more

Thomas Madden, a medieval specialist ,delivers 14 lectures on themes articulated in Empires of Trust his 2009 book on the subject.Madden is an entertaining lecturer and The Tiber and the Potomac has many insights about Rome which Madden uses to assess(and defend ) contemporary American foreign polic......more

As Professor Madden notes, America’s founding fathers were heavily influenced by the writings of the Romans. They were founding a republic and didn’t want it to experience Rome’s failures. Consequently, they added design features to avoid Rome’s pitfalls. Interestingly enough, the nation they built......more

Professor Madden never Fails to Satisfy! This was an amazing book that really does an excellent job cutting through eons of time to deliver a well researched proposition. His conclusion are all backed by historical data and documentation. I love the way he effortlessly delivers so much history in a......more

I love Madden's work and this is no exception. I learned a lot. Madden is very cautious in his predictions about the future of the American Republic, as he should be. It's impossible to make valid predictions based on a sample size of 2.......more