The Critic’s Notebook by the Editors

The Critic’s Notebook by the Editors

Nonfiction: Carthage: A New History, by Eve MacDonald (W. W. Norton): Carthage, located in modern-day Tunisia, is largely known for its titanic—and ultimately fatal—struggle with Rome for mastery of the Mediterranean in the third century B.C. So complete was Carthage’s obliteration by Rome in 146 B.C. that the history of this once-thriving, highly literate metropolis remains obscure and must be reconstructed from oblique references scattered in …