A sweltering week in late August. Where better to enjoy the last days of summer than on the beautiful Bay of Naples?But even as Rome's richest citizens relax in their villas around Pompeii and Herculaneum, there are ominous warnings that something is going wrong. Wells and springs are failing, a man has disappeared, and now the greatest aqueduct in the world -the mighty Aqua Augusta - has suddenly ceased to flow...Through the eyes of four characters - a young engineer, an adolescent girl, a corrupt millionaire and an elderly scientist -Robert Harris brilliantly recreates a luxurious world on the brink of destruction.

"American superiority in all matters of science, economics, industry, politics, business, medicine, engineering,social life, social justice, and of course, the military was total and indisputable. Even Europeans suffering the pangs of wounded chauvinism looked on with awe at the brilliant example the United States had set for the world as the third millennium began."

  Tom Wolfe, Hooking Up

"In the whole world, where~r the vault of heaven turns,there is no land so well adorned with all that wins Nature"s crown as Italy, the ruler and second mother of the world, with her men and women, her generals and soldiers, her slaves, her pre-eminence in arts and crafts,her wealth of brilliant talent..."

  Pliny, Natural History

"How can we withhold our respect from a water system that, in the first century AD, supplied the city of Rome with substantially more water than was supplied in 1985 to New York City?"

  A. Trevor Hodge, author,

  Roman Aqueducts & Water Supply