Books in Brief: Hannibal’s Footsteps

Hannibal’s Footsteps, by Bernard Levin (Crown, 180 pp., $19.95)

Hannibal slaughtered sixty thousand Romans at Cannae in 216 b.c., and defeated Scipio the Elder at the Ticino River and Gaius Flaminius at Lake Trasimeno, where the earth quaked. But for those of us with little Latin and less Greek, the Carthaginian general may be known only for an improbable march across the Alps with elephants. This is a trip that has been retraced countless times (by Napoleon, among others) since Polybius first followed in Hannibal’s footsteps around 160 b.c. The latest in the series is the British journalist Bernard Levin. Levin is at his best when he goes off the subject. From the literal sidetrip to sample Jacques Pic’s three-star cuisine at Valence, to the more rhetorical digressions on Giscard d’Estaing’s questionable taste in choosing Bokassa for a shooting partner, or the true extent of French resistance during World War II, it’s the asides that make the book. But Levin does not quite make the transition from outer journey to inner. His book is spread too thin—not enough on the French through whose countryside he walked, not enough on his reasons for making the trip (which seem to have to do with aging and wanting to have no regrets), not enough on Hannibal himself, who should haunt this book, and who instead seems at times almost extraneous to it.

KD

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Katherine Dalton

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Hannibal’s Footsteps, by Bernard Levin (Crown, 180 pp., $19.95)

Hannibal slaughtered sixty thousand Romans at Cannae in 216 b.c., and defeated Scipio the Elder at the Ticino River and Gaius Flaminius at Lake Trasimeno, where the earth quaked. But for those of us with little Latin and less Greek, the Carthaginian general may be known only for an improbable march across the Alps with elephants. This is a trip that has been retraced countless times (by Napoleon, among others) since Polybius first followed in Hannibal’s footsteps around 160 b.c. The latest in the series is the British journalist Bernard Levin. Levin is at his best when he goes off the subject. From the literal sidetrip to sample Jacques Pic’s three-star cuisine at Valence, to the more rhetorical digressions on Giscard d’Estaing’s questionable taste in choosing Bokassa for a shooting partner, or the true extent of French resistance during World War II, it’s the asides that make the book. But Levin does not quite make the transition from outer journey to inner. His book is spread too thin—not enough on the French through whose countryside he walked, not enough on his reasons for making the trip (which seem to have to do with aging and wanting to have no regrets), not enough on Hannibal himself, who should haunt this book, and who instead seems at times almost extraneous to it.