books on the Varus battle in the Teutoburg Forest

Readers of my website know of my interest in Kalkriese, the place of the Varus battlefield. The location was a mystery for many centuries. The eminent 19th century historian Theodor Mommsen was convinced that he had discovered it, largely through coin finds in a specific topographical area. He was laughed out of court. Thanks to a British army officer and amateur military historian, Tony Clunn, who began a diligent search for the battlefield in the late 1980s, Mommsen has been vindicated. The result is a large archaeological site at Kalkriese near the German city of Osnabrück, and digging is still going on. Major Clunn has described his story in The Quest For the Lost Roman Legions: Discovering the Varus Battlefield, now available in a revised and updated 2005 edition.You can read my book review.

I was rather disappointed by another book on the subject, The Battle That Stopped Rome: Emperor Augustus, Arminius, and the Slaughter of the Legions in the Teutoburg Forest by Peter S. Wells. Review by N.S. Gill.  It seemed to me that Mr. Wells was simply jumping on the bandwagon. [However, Mr. Wells is the author of the excellent work The Barbarians Speak: How the Conquered Peoples Shaped Roman Europe.]

Now, a new treatment of the story will be on the market soon: Rome's Greatest Defeat: Massacre in the Teutoburg Forest by Adrian Murdoch, whom I discovered via rogueclassicism and its classicarnival. Murdoch's blog is called Bread and circuses, and his current emphasis is on the Late Antiquity, as he is working on a book about Romulus Augustus, The Last Roman: Romulus Augustulus and the Decline of the West.