Venice: Lion City

Garry Wills''s Venice: Lion City is a tour de force -- a rich, colorful, and provocative history of the world''s most fascinating city in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when it was at the peak of its glory. This was not the city of decadence, carnival, and nostalgia familiar to us from later centuries. It was a ruthless imperial city, with a shrewd commercial base, like ancient Athens, whi...