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› Find signed collectible books: 'April Blood: Florence and the Plot Against the Medici'
One of the world's leading historians of Renaissance Italy brings to life here the vibrant--and violent--society of fifteenth-century Florence. His disturbing narrative opens up an entire culture, revealing the dark side of Renaissance man and politician Lorenzo de' Medici.
On a Sunday in April 1478, assassins attacked Lorenzo and his brother as they attended Mass in the cathedral of Florence. Lorenzo scrambled to safety as Giuliano bled to death on the cathedral floor. April Blood moves outward in time and space from that murderous event, unfolding a story of tangled passions, ambition, treachery, and revenge. The conspiracy was led by one of the city's most noble clans, the Pazzi, financiers who feared and resented the Medici's swaggering new role as political bosses--but the web of intrigue spread through all of Italy. Bankers, mercenaries, the Duke of Urbino, the King of Naples, and Pope Sixtus IV entered secretly into the plot. Florence was plunged into a peninsular war, and Lorenzo was soon fighting for his own and his family's survival.
The failed assassination doomed the Pazzi. Medici revenge was swift and brutal--plotters were hanged or beheaded, innocents were hacked to pieces, and bodies were put out to dangle from the windows of the government palace. All remaining members of the larger Pazzi clan were forced to change their surname, and every public sign or symbol of the family was expunged or destroyed.
April Blood offers us a fresh portrait of Renaissance Florence, where dazzling artistic achievements went side by side with violence, craft, and bare-knuckle politics. At the center of the canvas is the figure of Lorenzo the Magnificent--poet, statesman, connoisseur, patron of the arts, and ruthless "boss of bosses." This extraordinarily vivid account of a turning point in the Italian Renaissance is bound to become a lasting work of history. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Borgias: The Rise and Fall of a Renaissance Dynasty'
More editions of The Borgias: The Rise and Fall of a Renaissance Dynasty:

› Find signed collectible books: 'The Borgias:the Rise and Fall of a Renaissance Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of a Renaissance Dynasty'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Borgias : The Rise and Fall of the Most Infamous Family in History'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Brunelleschi's Dome: The Story of the Great Cathedral in Florence'
Filippo Brunelleschi's design for the dome of the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence remains one of the most towering achievements of Renaissance architecture. Completed in 1436, the dome remains a remarkable feat of design and engineering. Its span of more than 140 feet exceeds St Paul's in London and St Peter's in Rome, and even outdoes the Capitol in Washington, D.C., making it the largest dome ever constructed using bricks and mortar. The story of its creation and its brilliant but "hot-tempered" creator is told in Ross King's delightful Brunelleschi's Dome.
Both dome and architect offer King plenty of rich material. The story of the dome goes back to 1296, when work began on the cathedral, but it was only in 1420, when Brunelleschi won a competition over his bitter rival Lorenzo Ghiberti to design the daunting cupola, that work began in earnest. King weaves an engrossing tale from the political intrigue, personal jealousies, dramatic setbacks, and sheer inventive brilliance that led to the paranoid Filippo, "who was so proud of his inventions and so fearful of plagiarism," finally seeing his dome completed only months before his death. King argues that it was Brunelleschi's improvised brilliance in solving the problem of suspending the enormous cupola in bricks and mortar (painstakingly detailed with precise illustrations) that led him to "succeed in performing an engineering feat whose structural daring was without parallel." He tells a compelling, informed story, ranging from discussions of the construction of the bricks, mortar, and marble that made up the dome, to its subsequent use as a scientific instrument by the Florentine astronomer Paolo Toscanelli. --Jerry Brotton, Amazon.co.uk [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture'
Filippo Brunelleschi's design for the dome of the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence remains one of the most towering achievements of Renaissance architecture. Completed in 1436, the dome remains a remarkable feat of design and engineering. Its span of more than 140 feet exceeds St Paul's in London and St Peter's in Rome, and even outdoes the Capitol in Washington, D.C., making it the largest dome ever constructed using bricks and mortar. The story of its creation and its brilliant but "hot-tempered" creator is told in Ross King's delightful Brunelleschi's Dome.
Both dome and architect offer King plenty of rich material. The story of the dome goes back to 1296, when work began on the cathedral, but it was only in 1420, when Brunelleschi won a competition over his bitter rival Lorenzo Ghiberti to design the daunting cupola, that work began in earnest. King weaves an engrossing tale from the political intrigue, personal jealousies, dramatic setbacks, and sheer inventive brilliance that led to the paranoid Filippo, "who was so proud of his inventions and so fearful of plagiarism," finally seeing his dome completed only months before his death. King argues that it was Brunelleschi's improvised brilliance in solving the problem of suspending the enormous cupola in bricks and mortar (painstakingly detailed with precise illustrations) that led him to "succeed in performing an engineering feat whose structural daring was without parallel." He tells a compelling, informed story, ranging from discussions of the construction of the bricks, mortar, and marble that made up the dome, to its subsequent use as a scientific instrument by the Florentine astronomer Paolo Toscanelli. --Jerry Brotton, Amazon.co.uk [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller'
This is a reissue of Carlo Ginzburg's book on the world-view of a 16th-century Italian miller, burnt at the stake as a heretic in 1599. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy'
"None of his successors not even Cesare Borgia rivalled the colossal guilt of Ezzelino " proposes the author. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'El Principe / the Prince'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Galileo's Daughter'
Everyone knows that Galileo Galilei dropped cannonballs off the leaning tower of Pisa, developed the first reliable telescope, and was convicted by the Inquisition for holding a heretical belief--that the earth revolved around the sun. But did you know he had a daughter? In Galileo's Daughter, Dava Sobel (author of the bestselling Longitude) tells the story of the famous scientist and his illegitimate daughter, Sister Maria Celeste. Sobel bases her book on 124 surviving letters to the scientist from the nun, whom Galileo described as "a woman of exquisite mind, singular goodness, and tenderly attached to me." Their loving correspondence revealed much about their world: the agonies of the bubonic plague, the hardships of monastic life, even Galileo's occasional forgetfulness ("The little basket, which I sent you recently with several pastries, is not mine, and therefore I wish you to return it to me").
While Galileo tangled with the Church, Maria Celeste--whose adopted name was a tribute to her father's fascination with the heavens--provided moral and emotional support with her frequent letters, approving of his work because she knew the depth of his faith. As Sobel notes, "It is difficult today ... to see the Earth at the center of the Universe. Yet that is where Galileo found it." With her fluid prose and graceful turn of phrase, Sobel breathes life into Galileo, his daughter, and the earth-centered world in which they lived. --Sunny Delaney [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love'
Everyone knows that Galileo Galilei dropped cannonballs off the leaning tower of Pisa, developed the first reliable telescope, and was convicted by the Inquisition for holding a heretical belief--that the earth revolved around the sun. But did you know he had a daughter? In Galileo's Daughter, Dava Sobel (author of the bestselling Longitude) tells the story of the famous scientist and his illegitimate daughter, Sister Maria Celeste. Sobel bases her book on 124 surviving letters to the scientist from the nun, whom Galileo described as "a woman of exquisite mind, singular goodness, and tenderly attached to me." Their loving correspondence revealed much about their world: the agonies of the bubonic plague, the hardships of monastic life, even Galileo's occasional forgetfulness ("The little basket, which I sent you recently with several pastries, is not mine, and therefore I wish you to return it to me").
While Galileo tangled with the Church, Maria Celeste--whose adopted name was a tribute to her father's fascination with the heavens--provided moral and emotional support with her frequent letters, approving of his work because she knew the depth of his faith. As Sobel notes, "It is difficult today ... to see the Earth at the center of the Universe. Yet that is where Galileo found it." With her fluid prose and graceful turn of phrase, Sobel breathes life into Galileo, his daughter, and the earth-centered world in which they lived. --Sunny Delaney [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Great Books of the Western World'
The Iliad (Ancient Greek ?????, Ilias) is, together with the Odyssey, one of two ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer, a supposedly blind Ionian poet. The epics are considered by most modern scholars to be the oldest literature in the Greek language. The Iliad concerns events during the tenth and final year in the siege of the city of Ilion, or Troy, by the Greeks. The Odyssey (Greek: ????????, Odusseia)is commonly dated circa 800 to 600 BC. The poem is, in part, a sequel to Homer's Iliad and mainly concerns the events that befall the Greek hero Odysseus (or Ulysses) in his long journeys after the fall of Troy and when he at last returns to his native land of Ithaca. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A History of Venice'
Traces the rise ot empire of this city from its 5th century beginnings all the way through until 1797 when Napolean put an end to the thousand year-old Republic. 32 pages of black and white photos, 4 maps and charts. [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'The House of Medici: Its Rise and Fall'
At its height Renaissance Florence was a centre of enormous wealth, power and influence. A republican city-state funded by trade and banking, its often bloody political scene was dominated by rich mercantile families, the most famous of which were the Medici. This enthralling book charts the familys huge influence on the political, economic and cultural history of Florence. Beginning in the early 1430s with the rise of the dynasty under the near-legendary Cosimo de Medici, it moves through their golden era as patrons of some of the most remarkable artists and architects of the Renaissance, to the era of the Medici Popes and Grand Dukes, Florences slide into decay and bankruptcy, and the end, in 1737, of the Medici line. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Italian Renaissance'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Life and Times of Lucrezia Borgia'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Machiavelli: Il Principe'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Machiavelli: The Prince'
In his introduction to this new translation by Russell Price, Professor Skinner presents a lucid analysis of Machiavelli's text as a response both to the world of Florentine politics, and as an attack on the advice-books for princes published by a number of his contemporaries. This new edition includes notes on the principal events in Machiavelli's life, and on the vocabulary of The Prince, as well as biographical notes on characters in the text. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'MacHiavelli's the Prince: Text and Commentary'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Mussolini's Italy: Life under the Dictatorship 1915-1945'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Mussolini's Italy: Life Under the Fascist Dictatorship, 1915-1945'
In his extraordinary new book, Richard Bosworth brings to life the period in which Italians participated in one of the twentieth century's largest, most notorious, and ultimately most ruinous political experiments-Fascism-under their dictator, Benito Mussolini, and his henchmen. The Fascists were the first totalitarians, and they provided a model for many other twentieth-century dictatorships, Hitler's first among them.
A regime based on a cult of violence and obedience, Fascism made immense demands on its subjects, killing many within Italy and its empire and ruining the lives of more. And yet one of R.J.B. Bosworth's most striking accomplishments is to show the gap that yawned between rhetoric and reality. Mussolini's Italy is lumped together with Hitler's Germany as a nightmarish totalitarian state that brutally reengineered an entire society. In fact, Bosworth argues, Fascism, though monstrous enough, had a far shallower impact on Italy because Italy was still such a traditional, undeveloped country, organized around family, tribe, and region, and because Italy's leaders were less ruthlessly ideological than the Nazis. Italians found many and ingenious ways of adapting, limiting, undermining, and ridiculing Mussolini's ambitions for them. The heart of this book is its engagement with the life of these ordinary Italians, struggling through terrible times. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Niccolo Machiavelli's the Prince'
Plot synopsis of this classic is made meaningful with analysis and quotes by noted literary critics, summaries of the work's main themes and characters, a sketch of the author's life and times, a bibliography, suggested test questions, and ideas for essays and term papers. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Power and Imagination: City-States in Renaissance Italy'
Power and Imagination: City-States in Renaissance Italy, by Martines, Lauro [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Prince'
"The Prince" has long been both praised and reviled for its message of moral relativism, and political expediency. Although a large part is devoted to the mechanics of gaining and staying in power, Machiavelli's end purpose is to maintain a just and stable government. He is not ambiguous in stating his belief that committing a small cruelty to avert a larger is not only justifiable, but required of a just ruler. Machiavelli gives a vivid portrayal of his world in the chaos and tumult of early 16th century Florence, Italy and Europe. He uses both his contemporary political situation, and that of the classical period to illustrate his precepts of statecraft. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Prince'
A classic of the western tradition, Machiavelli's "The Prince" has influenced political and philosophical thought since its publication four centuries ago. Political power, Machiavelli taught, has no limits. It leaves no room for the sacred, and it subordinates right and wrong to success. In this new edition of Machiavelli's book, Angelo Codevilla provides a translation faithful to the original and sensitive to the author's use of verbal imprecision, including puns, double meanings, and the subjunctive mood. The volume includes an introduction by Codevilla that places Machiavelli in the context of his own times, demonstrates his relevance to the history of political thought, and inquiries into the place of Machiavelli's ideas in modern debates. This edition also contains three essays that explore some of the most important ways "The Prince" clashes with the other main branch of western civilization - the Socratic and Judeo-Christian traditions: "Machiavelli's realism" by Carnes Lord, "Machiavelli and modernity" by W.B. Allen, and "Machiavelli and America" by Hadley Arkes. [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Prince'
(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)
That Machiavellis name has become synonymous with cold-eyed political calculation only heightens the intrinsic fascination of The Princethe worlds preeminent how-to manual on the art of getting and keeping power, and one of the literary landmarks of the Italian Renaissance. Written in a vigorous, straightforward style that reflects its authors realism, this treatise on states, statecraft, and the ideal ruler is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand how human society actually works. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Prince And Other Writings'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Prince Maachiavelli'
What makes this well-annotated translation stand out from others is an insightful introduction by editor Thomas G. Bergin--especially helpful for achieving a better understanding of the times and the political scene in which Machiavelli worked, lived, and wrote. Also included are a list of important dates in Machiavelli's life, an index of proper names in the text and notes, and a selected bibliography. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Prince: With Related Documents'
Widely read for its insights into history and politics, The Prince is one of the most provocative works of the Italian Renaissance. Based on Niccolò Machiavelli's observations of the effectiveness of both ancient and contemporary statesmen, the rules for governing set forth in his manual were considered radical and harsh by his contemporaries and shocking to many since then. This major new edition combines an accurate and accessible new translation with important related documents, many of which appear here in English for the first time. In his lucid introductory essay, William J. Connell offers fresh insights into Machiavelli's life, the meaning of his work, the context in which it was written, and its influence over time. Document headnotes, maps, a chronology of Machiavelli's life, questions for consideration, a selected bibliography, and index provide further pedagogical support. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Renaissance: A History of Civilization in Italy from 1304-1576 A.D.'
More editions of The Renaissance: A History of Civilization in Italy from 1304-1576 A.D.:

› Find signed collectible books: 'Rome'
This beautifully written, informative study is a portrait, a history and a superb guide book, capturing fully the seductive beauty and the many layered past of the Eternal City. It covers 3,000 years of history from the citys quasi-mythical origins, through the Etruscan kings, the opulent glory of classical Rome, the decadence and decay of the Middle Ages and the beauty and corruption of the Renaissance, to its time at the heart of Mussolinis fascist Italy. Exploring the citys streets and buildings, peopled with popes, gladiators, emperors, noblemen and peasants, this volume details the turbulent and dramatic history of Rome in all its depravity and grandeur. [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Story of Civilization Pt. 2 : The Renaissance'
A history of civilization in Italy from the Birth of Petrarch to the Death of Titian - 1304 to 1576. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Il Principe'
Con un saggio di Raymond Aron su "Machiavelli e Marx". Introduzione e cronologia di Franco Melotti, note di Ettore Janni e un glossario ideologico 16mo pp. 222 broch [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'El Queso Y Los Gusanos'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'De Principatibus: Le Prince'
Dédié à Laurent de Médicis, Le Prince est une oeuvre nourrie par l'expérience d'ambassadeur de son auteur. Machiavel y définit les fins du gouvernement : sur le plan extérieur, maintenir à tout prix son emprise sur les territoires conquis ; sur le plan intérieur, se donner les moyens de rester au pouvoir. Parce que les hommes sont égoïstes, le prince n'est pas tenu d'être moral. Il doit être craint en évitant de se faire haïr par le peuple.
La réduction de Machiavel au machiavélisme est cependant trop simpliste. On peut même lire Le Prince comme une des premières oeuvres de science politique, l'auteur ne cherchant qu'à décrire les mécanismes du pouvoir, à la manière du physicien qui détermine les lois de la gravitation. Rousseau ou encore Spinoza ont même pensé que Le Prince s'adressait en vérité au peuple pour l'avertir des stratégies utilisées par les tyrans.
Oeuvre géniale dans son ambiguïté, Le Prince peut donc être lu soit comme un traité de gouvernement à l'usage du despote, soit comme un ouvrage de science, voire comme une critique déguisée du despotisme. --Paul Klein [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Die Kultur Der Renaissance in Italien'
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