TILT : A Skrwed History of the Tower of Pisa [Hardcover]

Nicholas Shrady (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; First edition. edition (2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743229266
• ISBN-13: 978-0743229265
• Product Dimensions: 10.4 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,729,512 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very Enjoyable Slice Of Pisa, October 24, 2003

By 

Bruce Loveitt (Ogdensburg, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: TILT : A Skrwed History of the Tower of Pisa (Hardcover)

One thing I need to mention right up front: if you are looking for a very detailed architectural/engineering sort of book (a la Ross King's "Brunelleschi's Dome" and "Michelangelo And The Pope's Ceiling), you are going to be disappointed with "Tilt." Mr. Shrady gives you the structural basics - why the Tower started to tilt, how a recent "team" was able to decrease some of the tilting in order to "shore up" the Tower, etc. - but the book is mostly a cultural history, with the Tower at the center of a spiderlike web of information. The author gives you some Pisan history - its rise as a maritime commercial power as it provided transportation and supplies during the various Crusades; its final decline after a crushing naval defeat at the hands of Genoa in 1284 (which resulted in the 13th century joke: "To see Pisa, you must now go to Genoa"); the humiliation of the entire city being sold to the Visconti of Milan in 1399 and (apparently speculation in real estate is not a modern concept) being sold again, this time to Florence, in 1405; etc. Mr. Shrady does explain that, due to interruptions, the Tower took about 200 years to complete; it's made of marble; and it's basically a "column made up of columns." The book is full of much interesting information. For example, during the "Romantic Age" the Tower became a popular place for self-destruction ( eventually the authorities came up with a regulation that no fewer than 3 people at a time could climb to the to top of the bell tower. This was meant to stop individual and "couple" suicides). We also learn that Mussolini was embarrassed by the "Faulty Tower." He felt it didn't represent the Italian people at their best (for that they needed to hark back to the days of the Roman Empire). Mussolini convened a commission to come up with a way of straightening out the Tower. The experts couldn't agree on what to do, so IL DUCE did what any hands-on, take-charge sort of dictator would - he made the call. One expert suggested piping 90 tons of liquid cement into the foundation. (This was something Mussolini could understand- putting some "backbone" into the thing!) Most of the experts said it wouldn't work, and they were right. The Tower, instead of just leaning one way, began to wobble around in a weird sort of dance (we're talking millimeters) and after many months it, luckily, pretty much wound up where it started (rather than collapsing). (In all fairness, there have been many commissions, and none of them could figure out what to do until the most recent one - which was the 17th! That one convened in 1990 and just got the Tower "up and running" again in 2001. Even they almost got laughed out of business in 1995 when the Tower almost collapsed while stabilizing cables were being installed.) Mr. Shrady is also very good at debunking some historical myths concerning the Tower. For example, despite the story being passed down from historian to historian, Galileo never climbed the Tower and dropped objects of differing weights off (to show that the objects would fall at the same rate). Another myth is that the Tower leans due to sloppy construction. Not so, according to Mr. Shrady. The workmanship was fine. The boggy, unstable soil under the foundation is the problem (and is a problem throughout Pisa, not just under the Tower). Even though I enjoyed the book, and was happy to follow the author as he meandered down some historical sideroads, I still would have liked it if he had seen his way to providing a little more technical information about the construction of the Tower (and perhaps an exploration of some theories concerning how the structure has defied gravity and avoided being "downsized" to street level). Still, reading this book was a lot of fun...literally. Its "Pisa-like" shape causes the pages to sort of resemble a "pinned butterfly" when you open the book. It took a few pages to get used to, but in the end I found the difference from reading a regular book to be an interesting one.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A nice and highly informative history of the Leaning Tower, January 25, 2004

By 

Kurt A. Johnson (North-Central Illinois, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: TILT : A Skrwed History of the Tower of Pisa (Hardcover)

This delightful book is a history of Pisa, and its most celebrated landmark, the Leaning Tower. (Did you ever notice that if you say "the Leaning Tower", everyone will automatically know what you're talking about?) Starting with the Pisan raid on Saracen Palermo, and the rich booty used to found the duomo, the author traces the rise and fall of the Pisan republic, and the rise of the campanile (bell tower) and the efforts to keep *it* from falling.

Overall, I found this to be a very nice and highly informative history of the Leaning Tower. I was afraid that the odd rhomboid shape of this book would make it difficult to read, but it actually worked quite well! I highly enjoyed this book, and highly recommend it to everyone!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very Informative !, October 27, 2003

By 

MJN76 "mjn76" (Chicago, IL, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: TILT : A Skrwed History of the Tower of Pisa (Hardcover)

Shrady's "Tilt" is a well written account about Pisa's war torn history and the famous Tower that would take hundreds of years to complete amidst turbulent times.

Shrady does a good job dispelling the myths surrounding the Leaning Tower, the greatest being that the Tower was some great architectural error. No error at Pisa, just soggy ground! Also. Galileo has always been associated with the Tower of Pisa, but Shrady discusses how Galileo probably never climbed it.

Unfortunately, Shrady tends to focus on the city of Pisa for the bulk of the book. Certainly, the history of the city is important and it does relate to the Tower, but one tends to assume that the book would discuss Leaning Tower more, and this is not the case. The ending is somewhat abrupt. I was hoping for detailed discussion on the renovation of 1999, and it seems as if Shrady could have expanded on it.

(The book's cover is rather brilliant: The top and bottom are cut on angles so that when placed upright, it appears to "tilt"! Nice!)