Rome from the Ground Up Book

I have never been to Rome, though I will be going there soon (in January - am I crazy?) I do have some knowledge of Roman and Italian history, which made this book somewhat comprehensible to me. However, it is loaded with detail about every ruin, monument and church without giving the poor reader any geographical context. The few pictures are postage stamp sized, and there are almost no maps to give me any idea where these places are. This book may be useful for someone intimately familiar with Rome, but for the new visitor the mass of detail is overwhelming. I skipped a good part of it.