Volume 29, Number 9 · May 27, 1982
Death of Venice
By Peter Partner
A History of Venice
by John Julius Norwich
Knopf, 673 pp., $22.95
John Norwich's book is a competent and readable account of the Venetian Republic from its hazy beginnings in the Dark Ages to its fall at the hands of Napoleon, whom Norwich seems unable to forgive. Narrative history of this sort has never been easy to write well. It is also unfashionable, and historians who possess the necessary literary gifts do not often choose to exercise them in this particular art. Norwich had few English-language competitors when he attempted this political history, although a number of British and American scholars devote themselves to Venetian studies. The distinguished economic historian Frederic C. Lane has written a rather shorter survey of Venetian history and of a very different kind.[1]
Review, 2816 words
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