Rome
From kingdom to Republic, the Senate and magistrates, expansion in Italy, the Punic Wars and Carthage, the late Republic's civil wars and Julius Caesar, Augustus and the Principate, Roman law, roads and cities, Roman Africa (Carthage, Leptis Magna) and African emperors, citizenship in 212 CE, Christianity and Constantine, the fall of the West, and Byzantium.
From city to empire, and Africa within it
Roman North Africa was one of the empire's richest regions, supplying much of Rome's grain. It produced emperors (Septimius Severus), writers (Apuleius, Terence) and theologians (Tertullian, Augustine of Hippo, born in today's Algeria). Explanations for the fall of the West range from Edward Gibbon's emphasis on Christianity and decline (1776-89) to modern accounts stressing migration and invasion, fiscal crisis, plague and climate.
Mary Beard, SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome (2015); Adrian Goldsworthy, How Rome Fell (2009); Kyle Harper, The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire (2017); Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-1789).