TThe Lost Voices of Pompeii is a work of narrative history that focuses on daily life in the city rather than the eruption itself. Dr. Jess Venner reconstructs Pompeii’s final day by following individuals whose names and occupations are known through archaeological and historical records. The book is concerned with how people lived, not with dramatizing how they died.

Each chapter centers on a different resident of Pompeii, including enslaved people, merchants, political figures, and women who ran businesses. Venner explains how work, social status, and family obligation shaped ordinary routines. She clearly distinguishes between what is supported by evidence and what is inferred, which keeps the narrative grounded and transparent. The book includes photos and narrative - historical fiction, really.
Venner’s writing is straightforward and readable. The book works best as an introduction to Roman social history and as a reminder that Pompeii was a place shaped by human decisions long before it became an archaeological site.

#TheLostVoicesOfPompeii #JessVenner #WilliamMorrow

A brilliant book that brought history to life in a way I'd never experienced outside of a novel. Utterly fascinating stuff. Venner did an amazing job turning the past into this vibrant, moving, complex thing, and even as I knew what would happen I found myself on tenterhooks wondering if any of her (characters? Historical figures?) would make it. I desperately want to read more from her!

This book is proof that despite undergoing excavations since the 1700s, there is still more to learn about Pompeii and those who lived, worked, and traveled there. Highlighting previously overlooked sources, this book shines new light on old ideas.

Thanks so much to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC of this book!

Especially after having visited Pompeii, it was incredible to read about who the people living there during this time could have been. Highly recommend!

The Lost Voices of Pompeii:
Life and Death on Pompeii’s Final Day by Dr. Jess Venner is a brilliant piece of historical storytelling. This work is written by an actual historian/archeologist who has a social media account that attempts to bring history to life. I was not familiar with her social media account but I do not find it surprising after reading this book. I started reading this book on vacation and could not stop. I’ve always loved history but I’ve never read history while on vacation until now. This book is absolutely mesmerizing and reads like a novel. I hope it is just the first of more to come. History deserves to be remembered with this level of interest and insight. I could not recommend it more. I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher with no obligations. These opinions are entirely my own.

A humble slave, Petrinus, leads the reader into the historical world of Pompeii and his character of the last hours of Pompeii before the town is destroyed by the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. Throughout the fact-based story the reader learns about how the town's people, who ranged from wealthy Romans to humble slaves, dealt with their impending doom. Author Dr. Jess Venner uses historical records to create her characters and to describe how Pompeii's infrastructure was destroyed. Venner's book is an amazing book as her writing painlessly teaches factual history. If you like historical fiction, like I do, you should love her book as it shares historical facts much like a historical fiction book.

Highly recommend.

Review written after receiving a temporary ARC through NetGalley and the publisher William Morrow.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book. Potential readers should note the word “storytelling” in the description, as this is not a pure non-fiction work. Dr. Venner uses historical evidence to construct imagined narratives about the lives of several of Pompeii’s inhabitants, and she is very clear about the strengths and weaknesses of “critical fabulation” in the Introduction. What follows is a wholly immersive and enjoyable compendium of stories that serves to educate the reader about the reality of life in Pompeii before, during, and after the eruption of 79 CE. I expected Dr. Venner’s work to be well-researched, and it definitely met this expectation. Her introduction gives important context about the history of Pompeii as a city with a multicultural background still reeling from a major earthquake 17 years prior. She adeptly ties known evidence about locations and items identified in the ruins into her storylines, and helps the reader come to understand what life was like for all walks of life in pre-eruption Pompeii. Her footnotes were extremely helpful in further understanding the facts, but they are not necessary to sufficiently understand the history. More impressive is how well Dr. Venner writes the characters’ stories. She writes compelling, emotional narratives that could have come from a seasoned historical fiction writer, and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed her writing. The characters Dr. Venner develops adequately demonstrate the variety of lives lived in an Ancient Roman community and gives the reader an accurate and rather comprehensive view of what life was like for both the upper and lower echelons of society. Her final chapter covering the characters’ fates during the eruption was wrenching, and sent this one from 4.5 to 5 stars for me. I would love to purchase a hard copy of this book so that I can reread it and reference the footnotes easily. I would recommend this for anyone who is a Pompeii geek and wants to hear the stories of the inhabitants in 79 CE from their own perspectives while also learning more facts about life there leading up to the eruption.

I am a sucker for anything Pompeii related, and this book is no exception. What it is an exception to, however, is dry historical tomes collecting dust on professor's shelves. Quite to the contrary, this book is richly imagined and chock-full of wonderful, personal stories about the people who once lived in Pompeii. In each story, history is thoroughly explored through the a snapshot of a person's life in Pompeii, from slave to garum magnate, on the days leading up to the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. Each story is fully realized, the characters as human and the society as complex as what we have today. It feels like walking into Pompeii of antiquity, watching over the shoulder of it's inhabitants like an invisible, history loving ghost. This is a gem of a book.