The Medici
Power, Money, and Ambition in the Italian Renaissance

This is a reasonable airplane history, but the book's virtues come mostly from its subject matter: it's hard to lack narrative oomph when your subjects are the rise and fall of the Medici and the rise and fall of Savonarola. If the little friar wasn't so vilified in the English speaking world, I ima......more

An enjoyable read focusing mostly on Savonarola and his rise to power in the 1490s in Florence. There's also quite a bit about Lorenzo the Magnificent and his children as they dealt with Savonarola (and the Medici family as a whole was subsequently thrown out during his reign). So if you've read Pau......more

In hindsight, the second half of the 15th-c in Florence was pivotal for the political, social and intellectual movement we in the West have come to know as the Renaissance. In attempting to deal with the significance of the many events of the period, historians have a wealth of information to cope w......more

I began reading this book before a planned trip to Florence. It had been recommended by one of my travel mates and I thank him for that. Having now been in many of the places cited in the book and learned more about the history of Florence, I enjoyed finishing it even more. In previous fiction I'd r......more

The most interesting aspect of this book for me was the connections it described between the Medici and Savonarola.......more