Review by New York Times Review
SOME visitors to Venice, dazzled by its beauty, are struck speechless; a great many more, to judge from the ceaseless flood of books about it, have the opposite reaction. The library of literature inspired by the city and its wealth of masterpieces was already vast 131 years ago, when Henry James wrote his essay entitled "Venice." "It is a great pleasure to write the word," James began, "but I am not sure there is not a certain impudence in pretending to add anything to it." Thomas F. Madden, brave soul, has tried to cram all of Venice between the covers of one medium-size book; the subtitle, "A New History," is clearly meant to draw readers' attention. This is what its publisher calls the "first full portrait of the city in English in more than 30 years." But if it's new, it's not innovative. Madden has written a conventional narrative history, sweeping in scope and calmly, blandly authoritative. Though he's a professional historian who teaches at St. Louis University, he seems more proud of his storytelling than his scholarship. And what a story it is. The first Venetians were refugees; to escape the barbarians ravaging the Roman Empire, they settled an archipelago of marshy islands safely out of the invaders' reach - in the middle of a lagoon. From these modest beginnings, a new empire emerged. Built on maritime trade - a free flow of goods and capital unique in the feudal, agrarian world of the Middle Ages - the Republic of St. Mark extended its power out through the Adriatic and across the Mediterranean. But the prodigious wealth accumulated on the Rialto by the merchants who constructed the city's glittering palazzi is ultimately less impressive than the political stability of the Republic (La Serenissima), which endured for more than a millennium, shielding Venetians from both conquest and tyranny. Breezy, cheerful, evenhanded, Madden debunks myths about Venetian decadence, and brushes aside ugly whispers about greedy, unscrupulous merchants. When a colorful character pops up (Marco Polo, Casanova), he makes the most of it in his brisk, no-nonsense prose. And he knows when to press the fast-forward button: "The twists and turns of this long and complex war need not detain us here; suffice it to say that it was a typically Italian affair, full of treachery, violence and shifting allegiances." Sure - but you could say the same about every war the Venetians ever waged, from the First Crusade onward. I suspect Madden was hoping to avoid the excesses of the brilliant but occasionally long-winded John Julius Norwich, who doggedly tracked the doings of the doges and their notoriously wily diplomats in his magisterial "History of Venice." Norwich's book, published three decades ago (the gap that makes Madden's book "new"), ends in 1797, when a strutting Napoleon shuttered the Venetian Republic - but no one would call it incomplete. Or obsolete. Fifteen hundred years after its panicky birth, the island refuge is now overrun by about 20 million barbaric visitors a year. James again: "You are reminded from the moment of your arrival that Venice scarcely exists any more as a city at all; that she exists only as a battered peepshow and bazaar." The population of the city was about 130,000 when James visited; it's now about 60,000. The upbeat Madden prefers the sunny side of the canal. He tells us that the spirit of Venice "is still vigorous and vibrant." Though he devotes a paragraph or two to the "devastating flood" of 1966, climate change and the threat of rising sea levels are relegated to a single sentence. But his optimism can't conceal what every tourist intuits: Venice, its beauty embalmed, is lying in state. Madden calls it an "exquisite corpse" - an image he likes enough to repeat. Adam Begley's biography of John Updike will be published in 2014.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [January 27, 2013]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Founded by bedraggled refugees fleeing the same barbarian invasions that brought the glorious Roman Empire to a close, Venice is a city most of us know for its art and architecture but of whose long, unique history few of us are aware. From its humble beginnings, Venice rose to a position of a naval and economic power as well as a great cultural and intellectual innovator. The Venetian republic, a model for our own, established extensive trading networks, became a maritime juggernaut, and endured the ravages of plague only to see its power gradually eclipsed by the Ottoman Turks and meet its ultimate demise at the hands of a French army. Stepping outside of his usual focus on the Crusades (The New Concise History of the Crusades, 2005), Madden paints a vivid portrait of a city without land, an empire without borders. His engaging work enters a sparse historiography that includes John Julius Norwich's enduring A History of Venice(1982) and Roger Crowley's City of Fortune (2012) and separates itself by offering a readable overview backed by solid research. Readers will come away from Madden's Venice with newfound respect for one of the great jewels of Western civilization.--Odom, Brian Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
This is a savory, tantalizing, but not-so-serene history of La Serenessima-a tale of invasion, plunder, and ultimate elevation to one of the leading merchant cities in Europe. As Madden relates, the earliest Venetians were former citizens of the crumbling Roman empire and desperate survivors of Attila the Hun's 452 devastation of such cities as wealthy Aquileia and Patavium. In 697, the scattered lagoon dwellers elected their first "doge" to unify the region. By 810, fledgling Venice was able to repel an invasion by the most powerful force in Europe-the Frankish king Charlemagne's son Pepin. and in the 11th century, the Norman invasion of Byzantium disrupted Venetian shipping in the Adriatic. But a Venetian war fleet reestablished dominance in the area, and Venice was the second-largest city in western Europe. Its economy damaged by the Fourth Crusade, its population decimated by the bubonic plague, by 1490 Venice had nevertheless reached the pinnacle of its power and with wealth, symbolized by the stunning family palazzi towering over the Grand Canal (although Madden also contends that medieval and Renaissance Venetians are often portrayed unfairly in modern histories as conniving and greedy). St. Louis Univ. history professor Madden's (Empires of Trust) makes use of thousands of Venetians' personal documents from the Middle Ages to present an authoritative history. Agent: J Thornton, The Spieler Agency (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Madden (history, St. Louis Univ.) presents a popular history as engaging as it is solid. In graceful, sometimes elegant prose, he details the long life of one of Europe's most intriguing cities, which survived as a republic for a thousand years. ("It is always crumbling, but it never falls," Venetians are fond of saying.) Though aristocratic in nature, Venice's government was neither closed nor tyrannical; it kept the city stable while other states were in turmoil and held the allegiance of all elements in society. And while Venetians had a reputation for sharp dealing, their reputation for piety was equally well deserved. Madden's description of the process to select a new doge is fascinating: nine bodies, 282 electors in all, were chosen in succession, largely by lot, just to reach the point of nominating the doge. The process wasn't meant to be streamlined. "Quite the opposite," writes Madden, "it was meant to be so cumbersome that only God could influence it." VERDICT This is a bumper year for Venice aficionados: Joanne Ferraro's Venice is for more academic readers but will please serious lay readers. Madden's will satisfy scholars but is intended for an interested lay audience. It is as enjoyable as it is astute.-David Keymer. Modesto, CA (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Solid, informative survey, emphasizing La Serenissima's stature as the world's longest-lived republic and a great commercial power. "The first Venetians were Romans," writes Madden (History and Medieval and Renaissance Studies/St. Louis Univ.; Empires of Trust: How Rome Built--and America Is Building--a New World, 2008, etc.), "proudly refusing to cooperate with a world in collapse." Fleeing fifth-century barbarian invasions of the Italian mainland, they rowed into a lagoon off the Adriatic Sea where they could fish and trade in peace. Its location made Venice a crucial nexus for commerce between Europe and the East, and its leading families valued political stability and a broad-based ruling class. In the post-Roman world of agrarian feudalism, Venice was an urban commercial republic. Its complicated political system would remain unique to Venice, but its financial innovations, from deposit banking to double-entry bookkeeping, were the foundation of modern capitalism. Venice stood at the forefront of world commerce until newly aggressive nation-states like England and France established colonial empires that overshadowed its older, merchant-oriented economy beginning in the 16th century. The fall of Constantinople in 1453 didn't help; Venice had always been a loyal ally of the Byzantine Empire, and the city stood at the front lines for over a century as the Turks repeatedly threatened to invade Europe. Madden admires Venice's conservative elite and defends it as being no more oppressive than any other pre-Enlightenment state. Once the 1,000-year-old republic was forced to surrender to Napoleon in 1797, Madden loses interest and whips briskly through the next two-plus centuries of decay and tourism. Plenty of books focus on Venice the romantic ruin. This one offers a welcome reminder of its historic role over a millennium in the development of a modern economic system and the maintenance of the global balance of power.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
