In this thread, post your reviews of history books that would be useful for travelers to Italy. Post the information for the book and your review of it. Anything posted here may end up on a page on slowtrav.com.

This thread is just for the reviews. Start a new thread to discuss any of the reviews. Thanks!

An initial discussion on history books may be read in this thread.

Amy

Can we change the title to History and non-fiction? Because I was thinking non-fiction art books, geology, etc..

quote:

Originally posted by Rome Addict:
Amy

Can we change the title to History and non-fiction? Because I was thinking non-fiction art books, geology, etc would all fit into a category of useful stuff for the traveler who is more interested in the in-depth stuff

ART HISTORY
I am going to start with Michaelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling written by Ross King. This brief non-fiction account of the politics, popes and painting during the years Michaelangelo spent creating the Sistine is eminently readable. I learned more about the truth of how this masterpiece was created than I have in a lifetime of general interest reading, art lectures, and visiting the Sistine.

While we are on the topic although not quite as fun a read is William Wallace's "Michaelangelo The Complete Sculpture, Painting, Architecture." Wallace is a renowned Michaelangelo scholar. He cagily avoids the "are the prigione at the accademia truly unfinished" question. Although he tends to slant toward the they were deliberately left unfinished by Michaelangelo side. Buy this gorgeously illustrated book through the Metropolitan Museum of Art website and get a good price and do a good deed by supporting art in America.

The heavily recommended Brunelleschis-Dome,How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture also by Ross King is another must have for those with an intellectual curiousity about the Duomo in Florence.


Somewhat "off topic" but not really is "How the Irish Saved Civilization" by Thomas Cahill. This book is about the bad years, Rome has been sacked, the dark ages are fast approaching. Life in a backwater so worthless that the Romans didn't even bother to conquer it. How the irish monks gave rise to the medieval and renaissance churches as centers of learning and art. Who knew?

I'd also like to bring to people's attention what is already on the SlowTrav site:
Rome Books, by Robert Santa Monica (scroll down for art history, and history)

I would also like to see non-fiction DVDs about Rome, its history and art, on this thread. I have been enjoying the relevant segments of Kenneth Clark's Civilizationseries, for example. These are a wonderful visual supplement to reading.

I'd like to throw my oar in for a few titles.

First another vote for William Wallace's MICHELANGELO THE COMPLETE SCULPTURE PAINTING ARCHITECTURE. Among other virtues it has the only photograph of the Sistine Chapel I have senn that actually makes some of the three dimensionality brought out by the restoration visible from a printed page. It's a long shot of the whole expanse taken from the Noah end, and in the farthest depths legs drop from the plaster into space. Page 140, No fakey 3d glasses needed.

Then a guidebook: (yes, the rules say nonfiction, and it is.) Well worth reading before your trip to Rome, and packing to take with you through ruins. ROME by Amanda Claridge. It's been republished by Oxford University Press in the Oxford Archaeological Guides series. Lightheartedly written by a lady who can be clear truthful and unexaggerated AND funny and a fine storyteller at the same time. This book will NOT try to tell that the holes in the area above the Agrippa inscription of the Pantheon were put there by German fire during the liberation of Rome in WWII.

Last, for DVD seekers, ROME POWER AND GLORY is not half bad for historical orientation, and include a rare hour on the Etruscan era of Rooman history. Beautifully shot, with academic talking heads kept to a minimum. 2 Learning Channel DVDs from Questar. 5 hours, Peter Coyote narrates.

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This message has been edited. Last edited by: Amy,

ANCIENT ROME ON 5 DENARII A DAY
Philip Matyszak

This is a kind of lightweight but entertaining book by a Cambridge professor who has written more serious tomes. It purports to be a guidebook for someone travelling to Rome around 100AD. There are sections about transport, lodgings, food, money, entertainment, and suggested walks. The section on useful phrases is pretty funny, but this is accurate and useful information about daily life in Rome of that time. It is also an attractive book, with quotes from ancient writers, line drawings, and pictures from the Altair4 multimedia project reconstructions of ancient sites.

This might finally be the place to admit my reservations about the Ross King book on Brunelleschi and the construction of the Dome.

I am generally a very patient reader, but King told much more about the subject than I really cared to know, and did not do it in a way that made me care. Also, I may not be remembering correctly but I think I was a bit doubtful about his reconstruction of the rivalry between Brunelleschi and Ghiberti.

In short, this book bored me, and I left it in Florence.

Definitely "The Stones of Florence" should be on any ones ready list, my mind is blank on the author but it is on the tip of my tongue, I think that it is Mc Carthy.

her description of the cacaphonie of the traffic on via Romana in the '50s is still applicable.

Marian:

You are right, the Brunelleschi's Dome book is dense. I enjoyed it because of the physics which I know makes me an odd duck. Or is one of the things that makes me an odd duck.

quote:

Originally posted by Marian:
This might finally be the place to admit my reservations about the Ross King book on Brunelleschi and the construction of the Dome.

I'd hate arguing with Marian, but I loved reading Brunelleschi's Dome; I read it like a thriller. But then, I am probably the real odd duck because I love Alberto Moravia's La Noia and there are probably people who would shoot through the book if they could...

Not exactly a history book, but I've just read Tim Parks' book reviewof L. Riall's new biography of Garibaldi, "Garibaldi, the Invention of a Hero.

Of course it's more than a review, as Parks gives his own views on Garibaldi, Mazzini, et al. I found Parks' comments at the end particularly moving.

This is history of a kind -
The Medici Conspiracy: The Illicit Journey of Looted Antiquities, From Italy's Tomb Raiders to the World's Greatest Museums

It's a fascinating, and sad, picture of the widespread looting of tombs, mostly in Italy, of artifacts and the complicity of some of the world's best known museums and auction houses. I was appalled if not completely surprised to read of the involvement of such as The Metropolitan Museum, The Getty Museum and Sotheby's among others. Both the quantity and quality of lost antiquities is amazing.

There are a few places where Ross King gets things a little bit wrong in his book on B's dome. Having just come out of a MA program in Florentine Renaissance history, I find the book "light" rather than dense, but that's compared to the incredibly dense stuff I had to read in the MA program.

I am hesitant to list any of it here because unless you're in a major scholarly mode, it's not going to be easy reading. But I'll go ahead and recommend the most recent book by the world-renowned Florentine Renaissance scholar who I had the honor to study under. Professor Dale Kent's book called Cosimo de' Medici and the Florentine Renaissance: The Patron's Oeuvre.

She covers the entirety of the works commissioned by Cosimo, and his relationship with the artists, particularly his close relationship with Donatello. The book covers an amazing array of aspects of Quattrocento Florentine culture. She covers how Cosimo's patronage networks operated, Cosimo's political aspirations versus his religious ones, and how this determined what he commissioned, a and there's a lot on role that Florentine themselves had in creating the popular culture, their festivities, their songs and poetry, and the reciprocal relationship between the artists and the patrons.

It's a huge book, with a lot of images of art. Dale Kent is one of the top scholars of Florence's 15th century and definitely THE authority on patronage networks and how they functioned. She's been able to get, I feel, closer to a realistic account of what elite and non-elite life was really like for 15th century Florentines. She's devoted her adult life to her study of Florence's Quattrocento and she's read thousands of Medici letters and other documents in the Florentine archives. You won't go wrong reading her stuff, but it's major scholarly!!!

quote:

Cosimo de' Medici and the Florentine Renaissance: The Patron's Oeuvre

sounds interesting, I shall look it up!

Red Red Wine - may I ask if you spent any of your time studying in Florence, and if there is a program you'd recommend for such studies?

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Originally posted by woodstock:
[QUOTE]

Red Red Wine - may I ask if you spent any of your time studying in Florence, and if there is a program you'd recommend for such studies?

Hi Woodstock,
I didn't study for this MA in Florence although way back in 1985 I studied language, art, history in Florence at the Lorenzo dei Medici school for foreigners.

For this MA I stayed at the University of CA, Riverside where Professor Dale Kent is. (Although for one quarter when I was there, she went to Florence, to Harvard's I Tatti for the quarter.) It certainly helped me in the program, that I know Florence like the back of my hand and that I speak Italian.

I am not sure where you are in school, as far as level, but most opportunities for studying in Florence would be at the BA level. Lots of US schools have programs in Florence. Or else at the PhD level, if you studying something related to Florence, you'd go over there at some point to research.

I appreciate all of these great reviews. You have intriqued now by the back-stories of the Renaissance!

As a frequent visitor to Naples, I really appreciated Norman Lewis's first-ever book, "Naples '44". He was a British Intelligence officer in the post-liberation period and this is his diary. Though many are still daunted by Naples, those who travel here frequently will appreciate how far the city and its residents have come.

For admirers of the "little story" and for calcio/soccer fans, there is something a bit more contemporary: Joe McGinniss's "The Miracle of Castel Di Sangro". Tells of the elevation of a small-town Abruzzo team to the Serie B Division and all the individual stories along the way.

A HISTORY OF ROME
Cyril Robinson

I listened to this book, which I downloaded from audible.com. It is an older book, but I don't know the date of publication. It is a history from earliest times to the fall of Rome. I found it easy to listen to, entertaining, and informative. It is a very good and detailed popular history, rather than a scholarly work. However, as an older book it has some odd prejudices (characterizing the Greeks and all eastern influences as decadent and often amoral, for example). You can either find some of the author's judgments offensive and close the book, or take them as themselves a point of history and keep reading (listening).

There are mistakes in these books, but they are great for the beginner and the fanatic alike (Amazon.com or Borders):
Chronicle of the Roman Republic
by Philip Matyszak (Author)

Chronicle of the Roman Emperors: The Reign-By-Reign Record of the Rulers of Imperial Rome (Chronicle)
by Chris Scarre (Author), Christopher Scarre (Author)
Good pictures and great timelines (like When was the Founding ofRome? Why was the Temple of Castor and Polux built in the Forum? When was the Regia built?)

Caesar by Christian Meier
This book is really worth reading. I have to admit that Julius Caesar is one of my heroes. That being said, I could tell that the author of this book didn't like Julius Caesar very much and it showed in his writing. I have wondered for many years about the late Republican Roman era. Was what happened inevitable? The author of this book gives political insights on this period of history and how Julius Casar fit in (or maybe didn't fit in with that outsider theory). I did not agree with all of the insights presented, but it made me think and rethink about why the Republic collapsed. Was the Principate/Empire really such a bad system? Robert Graves's Claudius would have said yes, but after reading this book, I come away with a different outlook on that because of the theories and facts that Meier presents.
On the other hand sometimes Meier gets tedious in what he seems to think Casar should have done. What should Caesar should done? not crossed the Rubicon, and let those pompous twits in the Senate strip him of his honors and property and force him into exile? Nobody acts entirely selflessly and Caesar was no exception. If the senate hadn't forced Caesar into crossing the Rubicon, maybe everything would have turned out different or maybe not. Meier points out that the Republic had been in collapse for years before Caesar was born.
A thought-provoking read on the whole.