European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - January 20, 1991, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Detailed history catches Rome with pants Down the firs i Man in Rome by Colleen Mccullough a William Morrow 896 pp., $15.95 Sarah Booth Conroy Washington Post r a Awe Quot to Quot Hen last we looked in on Colleen w / Mccullough she had escaped from her Job As a technician in a y y neurophysiology lab at Yale uni varsity by writing a Best Selling novel a the Thorn Birds a set on a sheep ranch in her native Australia. With millions in the Bank a she. Sailed away to Norfolk Island in the South a Pacific a a a a a a. A. A a a As today s episode begins we find in the ensuing decade or so the Story writer now 52 years old has transformed into an erudite scholar and written a the first Man in  the Story first of a projected series of novels on plebeians and patricians Battles and Bawdy in Republican Rome goes exhaustively into the con diets conspiracies and copulations Between the old aristocracy who have no Money represented by Lucius Cornelius Sulla and the wealthy upstarts who have no position personified by Gaius Malleus Marius ,. Both Advance through military campaigns convoluted conspiracies and marriage both wed daughters of Gaius Julius Caesar Grandfather of the Julius Caesar. All this happens in a bit More than a decade from 110 . Through 100 .Colleen Mccullough a when i decided to do a historical novel i thought this is a period no one has done a me Bullough said. �?o1 actually worked out the novel about the time i did a Thorn  i carry novels in my head a Long time. A i first thought id do a single Book about Julius Caesar. Then i realized that the period was too Juicy too meaty too bitter and Nasty for just one Book. So i decided to write a series like a sort of roman a forsyte  i like to think of this Book As the first chapter.�?�. Mccullough spent 13 years doing research for a the planned sextet an appropriate word in More than one sense bringing an entire Library on roman history to her Remote isl arid. The 896-Page Blok comes with a 111-Page glossary and pronunciation guide As Well As maps and portraits of the characters drawn by the author from photographs of roman busts. It has also been record cd on four cassettes by actor David Ogden Sticks. A the glossary a lots of dirty words took four or five weeks if i had been a professional scholar it would be taken a year a a she said. A i had the nucleus of what i needed for the Book from 180 classics from the Harvard univer Sily press a latin on one Side English on the a other. The 1914 translations Are rather quaint a morally depraved a they say when wed translate it As a so and so interfered with Little  latin called a Spade a  a Mccullough a transition has been fairly sue Cess Ful. At least one authority says her research shows. A. Trevor Lodge of the Carlton University department of classics wrote in in a review a academies in particular will have prejudged the Issue and will open the Book at All Only for the fun of sneering at the author of a the Thorn Birds trying to be a roman historian and falling Flat on her face amid howlers of a very sort. Unfortunately she doesn�?Tt.�?�. But Hodge goes on to criticize the prose As being a on the level of creative writing in Grade 11.�?� indeed despite the glossary the Book is full of anachronistic cliches a a grass widows a a did not sit Well a a not up to a a a Good show a a a electrified and More. A Well 1 was t writing in latin mate a Mccullough said in her Bluff Hearty manner. A the roots of All these words Are  tried to write in Good Standard English prose but you can to get away from idiom when the original is that  her goal was to make history readable and in Many ways she did. The work shows that even when writing about the Distant past Mccullough can Tell a Good Story.  is Avni Rahlf at Star let sch reviews Nightfall by Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverburg Doubleday 384 pp., $19.95 a Nightfall a a Short Story by Isaac Asimov published in 1941, is a classic. Now it has spawned a Book with Robert Silver Borg Given co author Billing. In the Short Story people of a planet whose six suns provide perpetual Daylight suddenly find themselves being told they Are facing the first darkness in recorded history to be accompanied by flames in the sky. The Story ends As an eclipse brings night revealing thousands of stars enough to drive insane the few whose minds have withstood  of no sunlight. A. In the Book this chilling tale becomes the basis of a. More hopeful apocalypse novel leaving a world in rums but with none of the nuclear fallout that stories set on Earth usually must consider. The Book goes beyond the original ending explaining what happens when Dawn begins another 249,000 years of Daylight and How a few survivors work out compromises they Hope will prepare their far Distant descendants so the people of Walgash wont Burn Down most of civilization the next time night Falls and the stars come out. Sharon Miller United press International houses without doors by Peter Straub Dutton books 358 pp., $19.95 this hybrid collection brings together a variety of horror novellas and non fiction essays that offer a glimpse into. Peter straub�?Ts.bizarre-. Imagination. Nightmares dreams illusions and  the subject of these pieces of terror. A Blue Rose a for example is a graphically gripping Story of a Little boy who takes his distaste for his brother and his obsession with illusion to a chilling end. A the Buffalo Hunter is another talc of delusion and distress. A Man creates his own reality and it consumes him in the end. Each character carries a link with another scenario or talc. Kathleen Ostrander United press International the longest War the Iran Iraq military conflict by Dilip Piliro Rutledge 313 pp., $16.95 in paperback the eight year conflict Between a Iran and Iraq a this Century a longest declared War also is its least chronicled no doubt because of its futility More than a million people were killed without either Side winning any significant territorial concessions. Pakistani journalist Dilip hire. Takes us Well beyond images of Khomeini dartboards and Saddam voodoo dolls to illuminate calculating interest group whom the West might have manipulated More skilfully. A the longest War Quot has a colourless. Dutiful tone but unlike most news reporting it captures the human motivations behind the War. Alex Raskin los Angeles times a piece of my mind edited by Bruce b. Dan and Roxanne k. Young Ballantine $4.95 paperback it is easy to see Why the column a a piece of my mind is the most widely read feature of the journal of the american medical association. These first person accounts by doctors nurses and patients reveal the pathos that underlies the seemingly sterile world of Medicine. Some of the More serious essays confront questions surrounding the right to die How to Deal with the birth of a severely deformed infant the problems of providing humane care for aids patients. 1 hese subjects have provided material for countless movies and to shows but the immediacy of these accounts gives them new urgency. Los Angeles times All books Are or will be available at stars and Otnes poc Storos. To plus sunday january 20. 1991