Author
biography:
Robert Bruton
New author whose first book on the life of Roman General Flavius Belisarius is scheduled to come out later this summer
I am an American author and a former CIA operations officer who was primarily assigned to Africa and the former Soviet Union. I have a BA in history from the University of St. Thomas and a MA in world history from Norwich University, where I completed my thesis on the role of climate change in the decline of the Roman Empire. I live near Washington, D.C. with my wife and children.
I became interested in Roman history during my undergraduate studies and pursued graduate studies to further my knowledge. When I was thinking about what to write my thesis on, I decided I wanted to add some new insight into the decline of the Roman Empire. An increase in evidence from the "natural archives" (ice cores, tree rings, sedimentology, palynology, entomology, etc.) made me realize that we in the twenty-first century have access to a wide range of new scientific evidence about paleo-climate change that was not available to previous students of Roman history. Evidence pointed to a series of massive volcanic eruptions in the year 536 AD that led to a climate catastrophe such as had never been seen in human history. The decade that followed 536 was the coldest in the past six thousand years. Trees stopped growing; summer frosts killed crops; food shortages and famine followed. And then in 542, the Empire got hit with a double-whammy: the cold temperatures created the ideal climate for the Yersinia pestis bacteria that causes bubonic plague, and within a year, perhaps half the population of the empire was gone. I thought it was a story worth telling, and General Flavius Belisarius, one of the most brilliant and resourceful generals in history, seemed to be the best one to do it.
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