New Review: Rome, Inc.

The following is a brief excerpt from a review posted on PopandPolitics.com:

It was not too long ago that a series of multi-national corporations were exposed for a series of unethical practices, and then promptly went bankrupt. Enron was one of the biggest ones and probably the most noteworthy of the bunch, but they were certainly not alone. The mainstream press covered the rise and fall of several multi-national corporations, as if their demise were equal to a serial killer's crime wave.

This disastrous episode in American history is not an anomaly. In fact, as business author and corporate cog Stanley Bing points out in his new book, “Rome, Inc.: The Rise and Fall of the First Multinational Corporation,” Rome may have been the first Enron. “Rome, Inc.” is a comical and amusing way of studying how and why the Roman Empire came to be and then crumbled into the dust of history. Bing looks at the history of Rome through the prism of corporatism. Romulus and Caesar aren’t just rulers, they become CEOs. Each conquest and subjugation of territory transforms into acquisitions and mergers. Even the occasional backstabbing finds its counterpart in today’s corporate climate.

When examined as if it was a corporation, the history of Rome makes a lot more sense and comes alive so that the modern student can fully understand the nuts and bolts of how its demise came to be. The players from across the hemisphere of Roman history become more humanized and the reader starts to understand what exactly possesses somebody to make the decisions that a Caesar or a Nero might make.

Bing zeros in on the fundamental element that made Rome successful, in antiquity as an empire and by today’s standards as a corporation. Unlike many empires in the past, when a territory was sacked, the conquered people instead of being enslaved were offered Roman citizenship. Even at the dawn of the Roman empire, citizenship was often better than the paltry existence of living as a member of a different entity. Bing notes that opportunism is a timeless virtue. Continued