Every schoolbook tells you the Romans worshipped Jupiter, Mars, and Minerva. Almost none of them tell you that Rome's builders may have stood closer to the altar than the aristocrats did.

In the hills above a port town in North Africa, an old military surveyor named Nonius Datus was ambushed on a mountain road, robbed, and left half naked before he even reached the water tunnel he had been summoned to save. When he finally fixed it, correcting a catastrophic twelve year survey error that had left two work crews digging blindly toward each other in the dark, he did something almost no other craftsman in the ancient world is known to have done. He carved his own field report into stone, in his own voice, and thanked the gods for it in the same sentence as his measurements.

That stone still exists. So does the tunnel. And so, this book argues, does an entire hidden religious world that has been sitting in plain sight for two thousand years, waiting for someone to read it correctly.

Concrete Gods follows the architects, surveyors, freed slaves, and forgotten guild workers who built the Roman Empire's roads, aqueducts, and domes, and asks a question popular history has never quite dared to ask directly: what if the people who built Rome were never just tradesmen? What if their guilds, their goddess, their tools, and even their highest religious title, a word that may translate literally to bridge builder, tell us they occupied something close to a priesthood of their own?

You will meet Apollodorus of Damascus, the architect whose brilliance may have gotten him killed by an emperor who could not stand being corrected. You will stand beneath the Pantheon's dome and learn why its open eye to the sky was never a design flaw. You will read the actual dedication carved by a wealthy Roman businesswoman who funded one of Pompeii's grandest buildings, and meet the enslaved brickyard workers who built genuine fortunes and freedom out of nothing but their own hands and skill. You will walk Hadrian's Wall stone by stone, century by century, reading the graffiti soldiers scratched beside their commanding officer's name two thousand years ago.

And you will discover why Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientists spent years trying to steal one particular secret from Roman concrete, a self healing chemistry so advanced it is only now being reverse engineered for the buildings of the next century.

This is not a dry academic survey. It reads like the historical thriller it actually is, built entirely from real inscriptions, real archaeology, and real published research, without a single invented fact. Every claim is sourced. Every uncertainty is named honestly rather than smoothed over for effect.

If you loved the way SPQR or The Storm Before the Storm made ancient Rome feel alive again, Concrete Gods will do something neither of those books attempted. It will make you look at a bridge, a wall, or a dome, anywhere in the world, and wonder who built it, what they believed while they were doing it, and whether we have been wrong all along about where the sacred ends and the practical begins.

Pick it up tonight. You will not want to put it down until the last stone is laid.

"Synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

PBShop.store US

Wood Dale, IL, U.S.A.

5-star seller

AbeBooks seller since April 7, 2005

Shipping rates within U.S.A.

Item	7 to 14 business days	7 to 14 business days
First item	£ 0.00	£ 0.00

Delivery times are set by sellers and vary by carrier and location. Orders passing through Customs may face delays and buyers are responsible for any associated duties or fees. Sellers may contact you regarding additional charges to cover any increased costs to ship your items.

Payment methods

Store description

We first started out as “The Paperback Exchange,” a chain of physical bookstores where we would part exchange your beloved books for new stories to transport you to faraway places. However, as shopping started to evolve to online shops and marketplaces, we bid our stores goodbye to become “PBShop.” This transition has only allowed us to blossom as we now ship thousands of titles to book lovers across the globe. We pride ourselves in being a community of local book lovers which allows our passion and devotion to shine in everything we do. In 2020 we not only celebrated our 20th birthday but our 1st birthday as being completely employee owned after becoming an E.O.T in September 2019. We are proud to be different and embrace standing apart on a book mountain by working from a virtual inventory which allows us to provide thousands of books that may be difficult to get for your bookshelf or your studies. Working with a number of different suppliers allows us to explore other avenues such as puzzles, sheet music and even stationery so we really do have something for everyone. Life is about being versatile in all realms of existence. If this is your first visit or you are a returning customer, we would like to welcome you to the PBShop family, for there is no friend as loyal as a book. We are a company who put our customers at the centre of everything we do as we understand the importance of reading because once you learn to read, you will forever be free. There are a whole lot of things in this world of ours that we are yet to explore, which is why we will forever inspire curious minds.…

Specialty

Hardbacks, Paperbacks

Seller's business information

Pbshop.co.uk Ltd

Unit 22 Horcott Industrial Estate, Horcott Road
Fairford, United Kingdom GL7 4BX

Contact sellerView this seller's itemsView seller's storefront

Terms of sale

Returns Policy
We ask all customers to contact us for authorisation should they wish to return their order. Orders returned without authorisation may not be credited.
If you wish to return, please contact us within 14 days of receiving your order to obtain authorisation.

Returns requested beyond this time will not be authorised.

Our team will provide full instructions on how to return your order and once received our returns department will process your refund.
Please note the cost to return any unwanted order to us is borne by the buyer.

Should your order arrive damaged, not as advertised or faulty, we must be advised of this within 14 days of delivery. Please contact us so we can find the best solution for you.

Our Customer Care Team can be contacted via emailing paperback-us@paperbackshop.co.uk, or by calling our UK Office on +441285 712 917. We are available 9:00am till 5:30pm GMT weekdays and 9:00am till 1:00pm GMT on Saturdays.

Right of withdrawal

If you are a consumer you can withdraw from the contract in accordance with the following. Consumer means any natural person who is acting for purposes which are outside his trade, business, craft or profession.

Information regarding the right of withdrawal

Statutory right to withdraw

You have the right to withdraw from this contract within 14 days without giving any reason.

The withdrawal period will expire after 14 days from the day on which you acquire, or a third party other than the carrier and indicated by you acquires, physical possession of the last good or the last lot or piece.

To exercise the right of withdrawal, electronically fill in and submit a clear statement on our website, under "My Purchases" in "My Account". We will communicate to you an acknowledgement of receipt of such a withdrawal on a durable medium (e.g. by e-mail) without delay.

To meet the withdrawal deadline, it is sufficient for you to send your communication concerning your exercise of the right of withdrawal before the withdrawal period has expired.

Effects of withdrawal

If you withdraw from this contract, we will reimburse to you all payments received from you, including the costs of delivery (except for the supplementary costs arising if you chose a type of delivery other than the least expensive type of standard delivery offered by us).

We may make a deduction from the reimbursement for loss in value of any goods supplied, if the loss is the result of unnecessary handling by you.

We will make the reimbursement without undue delay, and not later than 14 days after the day on which we are informed about your decision to withdraw from this contract.

We will make the reimbursement using the same means of payment as you used for the initial transaction, unless you have expressly agreed otherwise; in any event, you will not incur any fees as a result of such reimbursement.

We may withhold reimbursement until we have received the goods back, or you have supplied evidence of having sent back the goods, whichever is the earliest.

You shall send back the goods or hand them over to PBShop.store US, Springfield Gardens, New York, U.S.A., +44 1285 712917, without undue delay and in any event not later than 14 days from the day on which you communicate your withdrawal from this contract to us. The deadline is met if you send back the goods before the period of 14 days has expired. You will have to bear the direct cost of returning the goods. You are only liable for any diminished value of the goods resulting from the handling other than what is necessary to establish the nature, characteristics and functioning of the goods.

Exceptions to the right of withdrawal

The right of withdrawal does not apply to:

The delivery of newspapers, journals or magazines with the exception of subscription contracts; and
The supply of digital content which is not supplied on a tangible medium (e.g. on a CD or DVD) if you accepted when you placed your order that we could start to deliver it, and that you could not withdraw once delivery had started.

Shipping terms

Books are shipped from our US or UK warehouses. Delivery estimates allow for delivery from either location.

Concrete Gods

Item description from seller

Bibliographic details

Synopsis