"No city stirs the imagination more than Venice. From the richly ornamented palaces emerging from the waters of the Grand Canal to the dazzling sites of Piazza San Marco, visitors and residents alike sense they are entering, as fourteenth-century poet Petrarch remarked, "another world." During the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Venice was celebrated as a model republic in an age of monarchs. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it became famous...

Studies the culture which emerged in Italy during the Renaissance, focusing on developments in statecraft, art, and literature.

Did Garibaldi do Italy a disservice when he helped its disparate parts achieve unity? Was the goal of political unification a mis-take? The question is asked and answered in a number of ways in this engaging, original consideration of the many histories that contribute to the brilliance--and weakness--of Italy today.

How did a small, isolated city—with a population that never exceeded 100,000, even in its heyday—come to transform western civilization? Acclaimed anthropologist Meredith Small, the author of the groundbreaking Our Babies, Ourselves examines the the unique Venetian social structure that was key to their explosion of creativity and invention that ranged from the material to social. Whether it was boats or money, medicine or face cream, opera, semicolons,...

French novelist Charlotte-Rose de la Force has been banished from the court of Versailles by the Sun King, Louis XIV, after a series of scandalous love affairs. At the convent, she is comforted by an old nun, Sœur Seraphina, who tells her the tale of a young girl who, a hundred years earlier, is sold by her parents for a handful of bitter greens... After Margherita's father steals parsley from the walled garden of the courtesan Selena Leonelli, he...

"A charming narrative and "pop historical" look into how Italy has shaped the Western world's most vibrant passions, from literature to love, music to art, food to wine"-- Provided by publisher.

"Imagine being among the bloodthirsty thousands at a gladiator bout in the Colosseum, or at the chariot races in the Circus Maximus. Think of yourself among the decadent few in the ancient baths, theatres, temples, or palaces. Be an eyewitness to the burning of Nero's Rome. See the devastation caused by Mount Vesuvius in Pompeii. Meet the ancients, experience their daily customs, and visit the imperial cities of Rome and Pompeii as they appeared 2,000...