Great non-fiction gets slimmed down looks at Penguin Books’ latest venture:
With its snazzy new ‘Great Ideas’ series released this month, Penguin Books hopes to provide an economical remedy for time-pressed readers in search of intellectual sustenance.Each of the paperbacks costs $8.95 and offers readers a sampling of the world’s great non-fiction. For example, the Gibbon book is a slim 92-page selection called The Christians and the Fall of Rome. It presents Gibbon as sort of an intellectual tapas to be savored in one sitting.
Oddly, I was just thinking — sincerely — that I really should read Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
(Hat tip to Tyler Cowen.)
Update: Amazon already has a list of the whole line.
Another update: I picked up a not-quite-so-abridged (704-page) copy of Gibbon’s Decline.