Rave reviews for Roger Crowley's City of Fortune
15 Aug 2011
Roger Crowley’s City of Fortune: How Venice won and lost a naval empire, currently in the top ten history bestsellers on Amazon, has been receiving rave reviews including:
” Roger Crowley makes a trustworthy and wonderfully eloquent guide … Crowley is such a natural narrative historian, with such an eye for colourful but telling details and such a knack for dramatic character sketches, that he remains a constant joy to read.” Christopher Hart, Sunday Times
“In recent years Crowley has gained a reliable reputation as a confident, clear-eyed guide to the Mediterranean. In Venetian fashion he plunders the historical records and literary archives, setting them out seductively to display a teeming tapestry of Venetian bravura over half a millennium, from the years 1000 to 1500.” Iain Finlayson, The Times
“[Crowley’s previous books] were notable for their lucidity and assurance and proved Crowley to be one of the best narrative historians currently writing. City of Fortune is of the same standard … Crowley’s accounts are spare but thrilling … the rise and fall of Venice’s empire is an irresistible story and Crowley, with his rousing descriptive gifts and scholarly attention to detail, is its perfect chronicler. For centuries, he notes, the republic’s sailors returned home with “gold, spices, plague and grief” and in this compelling book, like a scrupulous Venetian merchant, he weighs out full measures of each.” Michael Prodger, Financial Times
“…this book affords a perfect account of its subject. In terms of pace, colour and fluency, Roger Crowley’s style is flawless, matched by his complete grasp of the motives - mercantile, political and ideological - driving Venetians across the increasingly tricky Mediterranean waters. Read him to discover what a muda was, how a bailo differed from a provveditore, and why our modern world has at least some of its roots embedded in the Adriatic mud on which this apparently implausible empire began.” Jonathan Keates, Literary Review
“Roger Crowley burst onto the scene six years ago with a stunning account of the fall of Constantinople in 1453….Military history is still his forte, and the book is studded with set-piece accounts of epic engagements…” Noel Malcolm, Sunday Telegraph
“Roger Crowley’s hugely readable, well-written and informative book – take it there with you this summer! – explains how the Venetian Republic grabbed the riches that built it…An expert on maritime empires and Constantinople, he conjours vividly the privations and horrors the Venetians endured in the name of trade…Crowley is excellent on all this – and in building our sense of anticipation of the empire’s end.” Stella Tillyard, Daily Telegraph
” ‘Crowley is a wonderfully lucid and enchanting writer who shines at siege warfare and combat operations but he is equally skilled in expressing the essence of Venetian economic power. His narrative is laced with references to business practice that never seem forced or inapt.” Christopher Silvester, Daily Express
