Product Description

"Frederic Lane has achieved what is the often unfulfilled dream of every historian who has devoted his entire work to the exploration of partial aspects of a single broad subject: he has given us a comprehensive, thoughtful, readable, beautifully illustrated general history of Venice from the origins to the beginning of decline." -- Speculum

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #129535 in Books
• Published on: 1973-11-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 528 pages

Review

"Students now have an analysis of Venice's fortunes over the whole course of its independent history that they can trust... A crisp and clearly visualized narrative." -- Times Literary Supplement

"The best one-volume history of Venice in any language." -- American Historical Review

"An up-to-date and comprehensive history of Venice has long been needed, and Professor Lane, as the doyen of historians of Venice, was the obvious man to supply it." -- J.H. Elliott, New York Review of Books

Customer Reviews

VENICE: A MARITIME REPUBLIC
Frederic C. Lane's classic work is still the best general history on Venice. The frontpiece chronology alone is an invaluable reference for the scholar or the engaged tourist. The dean of Venice's historians, his work ties the maritime, merchantile, and industrial basis that spured trade and established the wealth of the Venetian republic to the city's cultural manifestations in art and politics.

Excellent book, but poor paperback edition.
Lane's classic reference on Venice offers detailed coverage of the most important facet of the Venitian Empire--its maritime dominance. The prose is scholarly, yet still concise and readable. Compared to Lane, Norwich's weaker Venice book reads like a rambling travel log.

However, the figures in this paperback edition of Lane are very poorly reproduced. The maps look like they were copied on a xerox machine, rendering the place names illegible. The photographs and depictions of period artwork are virtually unintelligible. Interested readers might be better served to seek out the hardcover edition.

Solid History, but a little Jumbled
For someone with a serious interest in the development of the Venetian Empire on all fronts, this is a great and overwhelmingly informative book. Lane has done his homework, and casts light on all of the important corners of Venetian life--political, military, social, artistic, mercantile, etc.

However, his assembly of this weatlh of information is a bit jagged, faltering especially in the books final third. He doesn't follow true chronology, but skips back and fourth between miniscule details from various centuries in the matter of a paragraph or two. This happens, too, in the great "Paris: Biography of a City" by Colin Jones, but he smartly groups these extrapolations out of the timeline into special subsections of his chapters. In Lane, though, it's very easy to find yourself lost at sea unless you really take your time. And lingering in his text can prove tedious, as the onslaught of dates and numbers for all order of minute detail (that could indeed prove very insightful in footnote form) that in the body of the text is more distracting than enlightening.