Interview with Stacy Schiff, author of 'Cleopatra'

For her most recent book, Stacy Schiff has ventured to the distant era to relate the life of Cleopatra. The Egyptian queen's story is, of course, an oft-told one, but Schiff's "Cleopatra: A Life" - an engrossing and well-researched biography, full of delicious details - dispels many of the myths long propagated by Roman historians, Shakespeare and Hollywood, in "Cleopatra," is perhaps slightly more glamorous than the real-life monarch.

Read more: San Francisco Chronicle