The Life and Times of Constantine the Great: The First Christian Emperor, Second Edition, 2003

Rating:
Summary: This is the most remarkeble book on Constantine yet!
Review: D. G. Kousoulas has created a remarkable treatment here, bringing to light many aspects and details not present in other works.
While I some what agree with some of the points made by John (Cary)I think he goes a bit too far in some of his baser asertions, such as the insinuation that D. G. Kousoulas' Constantine is more of a work of fiction than a study of historical fact surrounding an actual individual. John also postulates that D. G. Kousoulas' work is not based on scholarly research. D. G. Kousoulas researched Constantine in historical documentation for over 25 years, how much more scholarly can you get than that... really.
In short, this book is truely well written and very informative. The book on Constantine in the market today in my opinion.

Rating:
Summary: Honourable account of St. Constantine.
Review: Honourable and well-balanced account of the Life of the Holy Emperor and Equal to the Apostles Constantine. Even the account of the Church matters were balanced and well-researched. This is usually where the western historians and anti-christian authors writing on St. Constantine spill their hatred, but not in this wonderful book written with a good flow and much wit.

Rating:
Summary: Constantine demystified
Review: I must admit I had so many misconceptions about Constantine before I read this. It is a great read, written in a narrative style that made me finish it in one weekend. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Very shallow treatment of the subject
Review: In the preface of his book, Kousoulas states "the traditional approach to writing history and biography is to tell about what happened, rather than to describe what actually did happen, as a novelist might-in effect to tell a story. Moving away from the traditionalist approach in order "to tell a story" has been my guiding principle." This is the main problem with Kousoulas' book.

I suppose the book is accessible to the masses (no footnotes or endnotes), but if you are actually interested in history and don't mind scholarly works, this is probably not the book for you. At times, Kousoulas' writing style had me cringing. By trying to tell Constantine's story as if he were writing a novel, Kousoulas runs into many problems. He tells us what Constantine did, but I felt like he never offered enough explanation as to why. He seems to take many of Constantine's decisions for granted, including his decision to promote Christianity. When I finished the book, I felt that I knew about Kousoulas' character of Constantine, but I wouldn't feel comfortable discussing the actual, historical Constantine with someone who knew something about him.

Kousoulas also deals with the problems in the church that were emerging at this time, but once again, it is a very vapid treatment. He tells about the arguments between the Arians and the Orthodox, but he never goes into what the importance of these arguments was on the larger scale.

Also, I wish he had provided a better conclusion. He goes up to Constantine's death and then ends after providing a brief sketch of what his sons did. It would have been nice if he had provided a final analysis of Constantine and his achievements.

I'm not saying this is a terrible book; I only gave it one star because I wanted to drop its perfect 5 star score. However, I would be careful about drawing conclusions on Constantine and Christianity from this book. It is far from objective and it really only deals with the surface issues. Seeing as how this is one of the only recent pieces of biography on Constantine, it is a shame that Kousoulas did not want to produce a more scholarly work.

Rating:
Summary: Very enjoyable and informative
Review: This is a delight to read. It's also extremely interesting and informative, especially for someone like me, who had no prior knowledge of the subject. Kudos to the author.

Rating:
Summary: an excellent, detailed, documented life and times of Const.
Review: This is a vivid and dramatic reconstruction of the life of the first Christian emperor. The research seems thorough with extensive use of ancient Latin and Greek sources. I especially enjoyed the author's effort to uncover the actual causes for major events including the tragedy in Rome in the summer of A.D. 326. With its absorbing and enlightening style, the book would be attractive not only to scholars, but also to the general readers.

Rating:
Summary: The Life and Times of constantine the Great
Review: This is an excellent portrayal of Rome's first Christian Emperor, Constantine I. Kousoulas gives the reader a thorough history of the Emperor's life from his birth to death. His account of Constantine's life is very detailed yet never dry. Rather, I found his style to be on the humorous side. His writing is pallatable to the scholar and general reader alike. I look forward to reading this book again.