A vital acquisition for anyone who studies the Renaissance and seeks the true role of the Medici in the history of Florence.
A fascinating warts-and-all history of the rise and fall of the Medici.
Hollingsworth (The Borgias: History’s Most Notorious Dynasty, 2011, etc.) effectively debunks the myths surrounding this legendary family, from the first moneylenders who moved into Florence in the 13th century through the end of the dynasty in 1737. Throughout the centuries, the author amply shows, the Medici lied, cheated, inveigled, and sweet-talked their way into absolute diplomatic and political power. They built up their banking business through the generations, and it became the basis for the family wealth. The Medicis understood the power of local politics and used their money to control it until Florence was no longer a republic but rather a dictatorship. Some of the best elements of this eye-opening book are the casts of characters and their relationships, which begin each chapter. Since so many Medici shared the same first name, these lists are extremely helpful in keeping the players straight. Equally illuminating are the dozens of illustrations. A major event in the family’s history occurred in 1420, when Giovanni di Bicci relinquished control of the bank to his sons, Cosimo and Lorenzo, who, despite his later appellation of “Magnificent,” was an inexperienced playboy who lacked political acumen. His blatant embezzling, plus the decline of the economy, gave rise to the attacks of Savonarola on the materialism and corruption of his administration. Hollingsworth also points out that Florence was not the only important city during the Renaissance; Milan, Rome, Venice, Naples, and Mantua were also significant. Florence certainly profited from the architects, artists, and writers of the period, but the Medici’s use of those artists was for the greater glory of Medici, not Florence. The true builder, Cosimo I, came to power in 1544 and became the first Grand Duke of Tuscany. He grew the economy and city and laid the foundation for the persisting perception of Medici greatness.
A vital acquisition for anyone who studies the Renaissance and seeks the true role of the Medici in the history of Florence.Pub Date: March 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-68177-648-4
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A spectacular, startling, and sometimes downright grisly chronicle, in words and pictures, of a bloody and tumultuous period. Alongside a stunning battery of photographs scoured from archives and collections throughout the former Soviet empire, the vast majority of them unfamiliar, Moynahan (Comrades, 1992) unfolds a history short on depth but told in crisp, imagistic (not to say strongly opinionated) prose. To his great credit, he persistently strives to include not only the obvious historical milestones— wars, revolutions, terror, famine, and the like (every horseman of the apocalypse gallops across the tortured steppes)—but also some sense of the evolving everyday sensory and emotional realities of Russian life under czar, dictator, and infant democracy. In this, he's not only immeasurably aided but inevitably outshone by the pageant of superbly reproduced photographs to which every reader will be immediately drawn and which, highlighting the human figure at the expense of landscape, run the gamut from imperial family portraits and staged Party propaganda scenes to snatched samizdat documents of ghetto and gulag, to the innovative high art of Rodchenko. Behind the familiar official faces of the masters- -Rasputin's manic stare, Trotsky's compelling gaze, Stalin's sly squint, Yeltsin's pugnacious querulousness—and the distortions of official history, both amply evidenced here, the photos unearth a vast parade of their nameless subjects (and, more often then not, victims)—``ordinary'' workers, peasants, soldiers, priests, shopkeepers. Too often it's a gallery of the unquiet dead: These pages are as corpse-strewn as the history they record—slain in purges, pogroms, insurrections, invasions, by starvation or single bullet, piled high by roadsides, dumped into mass graves, even, most shockingly and indelibly, filleted on the dining table of famine-stricken peasants driven to cannibalism. No mere coffee-table ornament, but a historical document of great drama and unusual intensity.
Pub Date: Sept. 29, 1994
ISBN: 0-679-42075-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1994
The story of an Israeli Jew's experiences as a mole inside Germany's radical right. In September 1992 Svoray was an out-of-work fortune hunter and sometimes journalist searching Germany for diamonds stashed and then lost by an American GI 37 years before. By accident, this quixotic hunt led Svoray to an aging neo-Nazi who took a liking to him and became his conduit to the German far right: unrepentant Nazis from the Third Reich, murderous young skinheads, and modern right-wing ideologues and politicians. Svoray forgot the diamonds and became an investigator for the Los Angelesbased Simon Wiesenthal Center, an organization established to combat anti- Semitism. Somehow, the neo-Nazis failed to penetrate Svoray's flimsy cover as a reporter for a nonexistent right-wing American publication and an advance man for a wealthy American looking to contribute to neo-Nazi movements. Further, Svoray managed to talk his way into right-wing strongholds in heavily accented English. Svoray and Taylor (A Necessary End, p. 131) tell the story of the Israeli's 18 months among the neo-Nazis. It is a fascinating, frightening, and revealing account, but one that is also badly flawed by the decision to write the book in the third person with Svoray as the hero/protagonist. The device turns In Hitler's Shadow into a tale of high adventure, complete with narrow escapes and moments of high danger, rather than investigative journalism. Svoray gathered important information about a movement that many critics charge has been paid insufficient attention by the German government, and the wide news coverage given Svoray's investigation may have contributed to Germany's recent crackdowns against neo- Nazis. (HBO will bradcast a tie-in movie in 1995.) An imperfect but riveting inside view of Germany's neo-Nazi movement and the dangers it presents. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 6, 1994
ISBN: 0-385-47284-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
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