This is one of the many books I read mostly because I found it laying about, actually among my parent’s things, on a recent visit home. The impetus to read it came from one of those horrible holiday conversation where it became clear that no one at the table could come to an agreement on some historical facts about the country, and that perhaps no one at the table had all that accurate an understanding of Italian history overall.
Italian History is pretty complicated, but I suppose no more so than the History of any other country. But in that Italy was one of the countries to come late (by European standards) to a unification and identity, and the fact that so many extremely famous and notable historical persons, movements, and empires originated here, it does seem to have a pretty remarkable history. This book goes over much of that.
What is there to say about a short little history book? It was fine. The prose was intelligible, the events were mostly laid out chronologically, and the historic periods were grouped in a way that made sense. I was pretty impressed with the depths it went into in some places, and the fact that it made passing references to some figures that I didn’t imagine would get mentioned (notably for me was Giambattista Vico). There were a few moments here and there where I thought the editor might have fallen asleep, and there were a few sentences that didn’t make some sense. There was at least one point where an error in a sentence actually detracted from the clarity of the paragraph, where the point the author was trying to make was rendered more ambiguous. But these things happen every now and again. The book is also showing its age, as some of the information here is not up to date. It was written in 1990, and since then modern historians have learned even more about Italian history (there is no mention, for instance, of Matera in the lonely province of Basilicata, a city which is now considered to be the oldest inhabited place in all of Europe). But I guess that will happen when you read old books that have just been left laying around, and not opting for their more up-to-date counterparts.
Reading this was a pretty good preparation for some reading projects I have lined up for myself in the near future. A refresher on Italian History is something that will likely help with such projects.
Failures in Polymathy 