While Rome Burns is a book collecting some of the 20th century American critic Alexander Woollcott's writings for the New Yorker and other magazines. The title is a reference to the popular legend that Nero played the fiddle while Rome burned. The book was published by Grosset & Dunlap in 1934. Vincent Starrett hailed it as one of the 52 "Best Loved Books of the Twentieth Century".Wallace, David. "The Round Table". Capital of the World: A Portrait of New York City in the Roaring Twenties. Guilford, CT: Lyons Press. p. 168. . Woollcott promoted the book on his radio show and his pointed critiques, quips, and asides gained enough of an audience to make it a bestseller. The New York Times reviewed it. The book includes accounts of his travels to Japan and Russia.
A sequel, Long, Long Ago, was published after Woollcott's death in 1943.
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