This is a well researched and balanced biography of Cleopatra. The author has many written many works on ancient Egypt and clearly is an authority.

The book's background of Ptolemaic Egypt gives the reader an appreciation for the complicated times within which Cleopatra lived. Of course, the history of Cleopatra's relations with Caesar and Antony are simply fascinating, as well as the accounts of her death and surviving offspring.

My only complaint is that the book sometimes unnecessarily digressed into details of general Egyptian archaeology and scholarship which was only tangentially related to Cleopatra's life and times. Perhaps this is due to the fact that remarkably little written and other evidence exists as to this famous woman. ( )

I kinda liked it and she has done good resource. But she got little too far from the main point too often. I wish it would have been more of just Cleopatra. ( )

I did not read the whole book. I used it more to compare some interpretation of facts as compared to Stacy Schiff's book, which I read in its entirety.