Italy category: 3604 books
Roman Legionary AD 284-337
The age of Diocletian and Constantine the Great
Language: English
Release Date: April 20, 2015
Diocletian and Constantine were the greatest of the Late Roman emperors, and their era marks the climax of the legionary system. Under Constantine's successors the legions were reduced in size and increasingly sidelined in favour of new units of elite auxilia, but between AD 284 and 337 the legions...
Probing the Past
Festschrift in Honor of Leo Schelbert
Language: English
Release Date: June 30, 2015
This Festschrift acknowledges the scholarly work of Leo Schelbert and his mentorship of graduate students in the Department of History at the University of Illinois at Chicago where for 33 years he taught American history. Professor Schelbert has specialized in the story of European migrations and...
by Ross Cowan
Language: English
Release Date: April 20, 2013
Language: English
Release Date: April 20, 2013
Between AD 69 and 161 the composition of the Roman legions was transformed. Italians were almost entirely replaced by provincial recruits, men for whom Latin was at best a second language, and yet the 'Roman-ness' of these Germans, Pannonians, Spaniards, Africans and Syrians, fostered in isolated...
The Entity
Five Centuries of Secret Vatican Espionage
Language: English
Release Date: November 25, 2008
The International Bestseller
"A true story that surpasses any novel by John le Carré."—El Pa**ís (Spain)
For five centuries, the Vatican—the oldest organization in the world, maker of kings and shaper of history—has used a secret spy service, called the Holy Alliance,...
Paolina's Innocence
Child Abuse in Casanova's Venice
Language: English
Release Date: October 10, 2012
In the summer of 1785, in the city of Venice, a wealthy 60-year-old man was arrested and accused of a scandalous offense: having sexual relations with the 8-year-old daughter of an impoverished laundress. Although the sexual abuse of children was probably not uncommon in early modern Europe, it is...
A Grammar of Cinepoiesis
Poetic Cameras of Italian Cinema
Language: English
Release Date: September 17, 2015
Cinepoiesis, or cinema of poetry, strikes us as a strange combination, a phrase we initially read as an oxymoron. Poetry is often associated with the abstract and the evocative, while cinema suggests the concrete and the visible. Yet, various visual media use strong and often contradictory images,...
by Selena Daly
Language: English
Release Date: September 23, 2016
Language: English
Release Date: September 23, 2016
Selena Daly’s work is the first comprehensive study of Futurism during the First World War period. In this book, she examines the cultural, political, and military engagement of the Futurists with the war effort, both on the battlefields and on the home front.
Beginning with the outbreak...
A Sudden Terror
the plot to murder the Pope in Renaissance Rome
Language: English
Release Date: November 15, 2009
D'Elia offers a compelling, surprising story that reveals a Renaissance world that witnessed the rebirth of interest in the classics, a thriving homoerotic culture, the clash of Christian and pagan values, the contest between republicanism and a papal monarchy, and tensions separating Christian Europeans and Muslim Turks.
by Trevor Dean, Daniel Philip Waley
Language: English
Release Date: September 13, 2013
Language: English
Release Date: September 13, 2013
Daniel Waley and Trevor Dean illustrate how, from the eleventh century onwards, many dozens of Italian towns achieved independence as political entities, unhindered by any centralising power. Until the fourteenth century, when the regimes of individual ‘tyrants’ took over in most towns, these...
by Maurizio Viroli
Language: English
Release Date: July 1, 2010
Language: English
Release Date: July 1, 2010
To many readers of The Prince, Machiavelli appears to be deeply un-Christian or even anti-Christian, a cynic who thinks rulers should use religion only to keep their subjects in check. But in Machiavelli's God, Maurizio Viroli, one of the world's leading authorities on Machiavelli, argues that Machiavelli,...
Printing a Mediterranean World
Florence, Constantinople, and the Renaissance of Geography
Language: English
Release Date: February 26, 2013
In 1482 Francesco Berlinghieri produced the Geographia, a book of over 100 folio leaves describing the world in Italian verse interleaved with lavishly engraved maps. Roberts demonstrates that the Geographia represents the moment of transition between printing and manuscript culture, while forming a critical base for the rise of modern cartography.
by Gregory Murry
Language: English
Release Date: March 10, 2014
Language: English
Release Date: March 10, 2014
Cosimo dei Medici stabilized ducal finances, secured his borders, doubled his territory, attracted scholars and artists to his court, academy, and universities, and dissipated fractious Florentine politics. These triumphs were far from a foregone conclusion, as Gregory Murry shows in this study of how Cosimo crafted his image as a sacral monarch.
Reading Natures Book
Galileo and the Birth of Modern Philosophy
Language: English
Release Date: November 3, 2015
Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) is widely recognized as one of the greatest scientific thinkers in history. Intriguingly, when offered a place in the Medici court in 1610, he requested the title of «Philosopher and Chief Mathematician.» Reading Nature’s Book: Galileo and the Birth of Modern Philosophy...
Alesia 52 BC
The final struggle for Gaul
Language: English
Release Date: June 20, 2014
In 52 BC Caesar's continued strategy of annihilation had engendered a spirit of desperation, which detonated into a revolt of Gallic tribes under the leadership of the charismatic young Arvernian noble Vercingetorix. Major engagements were fought at Noviodunum, Avaricum, and Gergovia, with the last...