Italy

Against the background of an age that saw the rebirth of ancient and classical learning, Paul Strathern explores the intensely dramatic rise and fall of the Medici family....

Brunelleschi's Dome is the story of how a Renaissance genius bent men, materials, and the very forces of nature to build an architectural wonder we continue to marvel at today. Denounced at first as a madman, Brunelleschi was celebrated at the end as a genius....

"Sicily," said Goethe, "is the key to everything." It is the largest island in the Mediterranean, the stepping-stone between Europe and Africa, the link between the Latin West and the Greek East....

No city stirs the imagination more than Venice. From the richly ornamented palaces emerging from the waters of the Grand Canal to the dazzling sites of Piazza San Marco, visitors and residents alike sense they are entering, as fourteenth-century poet Petrarch remarked, “another world.”....

The startling truth behind one of the most notorious dynasties in history is revealed in a remarkable new account by the acclaimed author of The Tudors and A World Undone....

In 1508, despite strong advice to the contrary, the powerful Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo....

Acclaimed WWII historian James Holland both narrates and reframes the controversial first months of the Italian Campaign and sets a new standard in the chronicling of war....

While they were indeed ostentatious, calculating, worldly, cruel - and even, occasionally, murderous - you may be surprised to find that the Borgias were not terribly different from other powerful and ambitious families of their day....

Each chapter paints a fascinating portrait of a single general, offering in-depth insight into his leadership skills and victories as well as each one's pioneering strategies....

The Florentines presents a sweeping and magisterial 400-year history of both the city and the people who gave birth to the Renaissance....

The Borgia family have become a byword for evil. Corruption, incest, ruthless megalomania, avarice, and vicious cruelty - all have been associated with their name. And yet, paradoxically, this family lived when the Renaissance was coming into its full flowering in Italy....

This enthralling book charts the family's huge influence on the political, economic and cultural history of Florence. Beginning in the early 1430s with the rise of the dynasty....

An extraordinary chronicle of Venice, its people, and its grandeur Thomas Madden’s majestic, sprawling history of Venice is the first full portrait of the city in English in almost thirty years....

Why does Rome continue to exert a hold on our imagination? City of the Seven Hills, spiritual home of Catholicism, city of the artistic imagination - Rome has inspired, charmed, and tempted empire-builders, dreamers, writers, and travelers across the 27 centuries of its existence....

Hailed in Italy as the best book ever written about the mafia in any language, Cosa Nostra is a fascinating, violent, and darkly comic account that feels like fiction and takes us deep into the inner sanctum of this secret society where few have dared to tread....

Tourists, armchair travelers, and historians will all delight in this fluid narrative that can be read straight through, dipped into over time, or used as a reference guide to each period in Sicily's fascinating tale....

Hardly anyone who was educated was unaware of at least some of the more famous stories of Roman myth and history as told by Titus Livius....

The Renaissance in Florence conjures images of beautiful frescoes and elegant buildings - the handiwork of the city's artists and architects. But equally important were geniuses of a different sort: Florence's manuscript hunters, scribes, scholars, and booksellers....

Historian Chris Wickham defies the conventional view of the Dark Ages in European history with a work of remarkable scope and rigorous yet accessible scholarship. The Inheritance of Rome presents a fresh understanding of the crucible in which Europe would ultimately be created....

This audio consists of a series of personal writings by Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor AD 161-180, setting forth his ideas on Stoic philosophy....