new pugio book from a RAT member

[marcos]

I see on the home page that there is a banner named "new book", to show new books by/with/for RAT memebers, so I want to let you know that one of the authors of the new book "Pugio- gladius brevis est" (British Archaelogical Report)is a RAT member.

I'm not totally sure my topic is appropriate, hoping no rule has been violated, I apologize if i did.

[Vindex]

I don't think any rules have been broken and it is certainly appropriate as it has been mentioned before .

Am I right in assuming you are one of the co-authors? mile:

[marcos]

Right, dear moderator , you are guessing right, once more hoping my topic is suitable for the forum.

[Vindex]

Well, I think so! mile:

[M. Demetrius]

No rule violation as far as I can tell. This would be the perfect place to talk about this book. What is the scope of it? A history of the pugio in its various forms?

[marcos]

Well, let answer Caratacus, who kindly did for us the review of the book and the foreward. He wrote ".....In short, I would suggest that they have produced as complete an examination of the pugio as it possible to achieve."

We tried to study this weapon as deep as possible, going on its origins and evolution, the geographical distribution and within the army, the technology and accessories, the historical sources etc etc, last but not least, we suggested a classification, in our humble oipnion, as rational as possible.
I don't know if our work is worth, but indeed we did our best to highlight this fascinating weapon.

[Vindex]

It sounds remarkably good to me and I'm suprised I haven't seen it before nor others discuss it more thoroughly.

I will have to see if I can find a copy mile:

[marcos]

I'm going to send you a Pm, Vindex.

[Caballo]

Could you post a reference so that we can get hold of it? I've taken the liberty of amending the title to include the word pugio - this shoud get more prominence!

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

Yes indeed! No point talking about a book unless we can all get a chance to get a hold of it!
:grin:

[John W Davison]

It's not currently available via Amazon, nor the Book Depositary at the moment, but Oxbow had it in stock and delivery was very rapid. I have not really managed to have much of a look at it yet - BAR format is a little too big to carry on the London Underground!

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pugio-Gladius-Te...1407309994

http://www.oxbowbooks.com/oxbow/other-su...s-est.html

Regards,John

[marcos]

Size of the book is A4, we had a though on that trying to arrange a smaller one but, since the book is very rich of graphs, diagrams, tables and images, it has been quite impossible. For some diagrams the A4 too has been too small, so that we must put some of them on two page side by side. Just for example, one of them is in attachment, and we must put notes related to numbers in the following page, since no enough room in those pages.

If you want the book, on BAR is easily available but, since I'm the author, I have a friendly way for few of you to get the book.

May I suggest to whom may be interested to contact me via PM?

[John W Davison]

Sorry, Marco - I didn't want to say that the book is too big, it's just that I do a lot of reading on the journey to work and the London metro system is just too cramped.

In the case of your book, the bigger format definitely shows up the illustrations better - and you also have some maps which are much better in the large format.

With ancient military equipment, bigger is better, as evidenced by such august examples of bigger volumes as Russell Robinson's "Armour of Imperial Rome", the Sutton Hoo reports or the recent "Woden's Warriors"!

Best of luck with the sales of the new book - it is certainly an attractive and well-illustrated title.

Regards,
John

[caiusbeerquitius]

Got the book yesterday, and really like it. See this as constructive criticism, please:

Almost none of the footnotes give a page number to the referenced works. I suggest that a .pdf is made by the authors, which then can be downloaded somewhere, e.g. here. This should include the number of each footnote together with the short titles and page numbers. As it is now the readers are expected to read through the whole referenced work in order to verify a statement or to find a quotation, which is rather impractical. If you think about making a second issue, I also suggest to use the actual Latin names for the authors, and not the modern Italian versions, since it makes using the book, which is in English, after all, a bit difficult to use. If you should need any help in working the book over for a second issue, please let me know, and I´ll help where I can. (I know, I haven´t published that much, but I read and correct loads of student papers all the time)....

[marcos]

Hello Christian
glad you like the book!

Constructive criticisms are always welcome. Actually we didn't put page numbers in footnotes but your suggestion is good, we will do in the next occasion. Pdf release is not in our hands rather than in those of the publishing house, I don't know if they have in mind such a format but I'll forward the idea.

Latin names of the authors are better indeed, the problem is that the book has been wrote in italian and then translated to english, thus I'm afraid that something hasn't gone on the right way. Sorry.

last but not least, thank you for your offer of cooperation for a second issue, that is actually very valued. We will be in touch.