Tilt [Paperback]

Nicholas Shrady (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 5, 2004

The campanile or bell tower in Pisa's Campo dei Miracoli would be one of the most famous and attractive buildings in the world even if it stood straight and true. The fact that it settled into a distinctive - and eventually alarming - tilt soon after its construction has made the tower an icon. Now the bell tower is instantly recognisable shorthand not just for Pisa but for Italy as a whole. Originally designed as a display of wealth and power in Pisa's heyday, successive generations have used it as a symbol to their own ends. For Percy Bysshe Shelley and his Pisan circle it had the romantic power of a ruin; during the Second World War it was a suspected enemy hideout, and only very narrowly escaped being bombed. Today, having been saved from dramatic collapse by a British soil mechanic, it is an architectural phenomenon and tourist money-spinner. In a hugely entertaining and informative narrative that features such vibrant characters as Dante, Machiavelli, Galileo and Il Duce, Nicholas Shrady finally reveals the secret history of the world's most famous architectural oddity.

Editorial Reviews

Review

A lively and engaging account... informative and often amusing. -- The New York Times Book Review

Shrady has written something akin to a biography of the famed and flawed bell tower... -- The Washington Post --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

NICHOLAS SHRADY is the author of SACRED ROADS: ADVENTURES FROM THE PILGRIMAGE TRAIL. His articles, profiles and reviews have appeared in ARCHITECTURAL DIGEST, THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, TRAVEL & LEISURE, FORBES and TOWN & COUNTRY among other publications.

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Pocket Books (July 5, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743450698
• ISBN-13: 978-0743450690
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 4.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,728,008 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Give it a push, luv!, July 2, 2005

By 

Joseph Haschka (Glendale, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Tilt: A Skewed History of the Tower of Pisa (Mass Market Paperback)

At the conclusion of TILT, the more perverse reader might just think: "Let it fall over; I'll even help with a shove." Especially if full cover price was paid for the book. Happily, I bought a used copy for a steal, so I entertain no such revisionist thought.

TILT is all about the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Well, pretty much. Its 835-year history, including the 197 years it took to build the thing at a stutter start and stop pace, is so intertwined with Pisa itself that the reader gets an abbreviated history of the city's glory days whether one cares much or not. Luckily, TILT is commendably short.

Don't misunderstand. Nicholas Shrady's history-Lite of one of the world's most recognizable buildings is not without charm. The author's style is chatty as he ascribes the Tower's origin to the rise of the Pisa city-state in the 11th century when its navy plundered Palermo, the capital of Muslim Sicily, the loot from which raid funded the construction of the cathedral complex into which the Tower later became incorporated commencing in 1173. Then, Pisa's fortunes went into decline in the 1200s as it started squabbling with more powerful rivals - Florence, Genoa, and Venice. Understandably, because of the all the internecine warfare and the Tower's ever increasing tilt, the edifice wasn't completed until 1370.

Shrady spends a lot of page space on the life of Galileo, and eventually concludes that his famous experiment, wherein he dropped two different-sized cannonballs from the top of the Tower to demonstrate that objects fall at the same rate regardless of their mass, was a complete fiction created by his admiring disciple, Vincenzo Viviani, since no contemporary record of the event exists.

Of course, the Tower's increasing deviation from the vertical is the unifying thread, and the author gleefully points out that some seventeen commissions have been created over the centuries to deal with the problem, only the last of which apparently successfully stabilized the Tower in 1999-2000 by removing dirt from underneath one side of the foundation. Indeed, the book would have interested me more had the author dwelled further on technical aspects and difficulties of that project than on what came before.

At 161 paper-backed pages, TILT is a mildly amusing read - with the stress on "mildly" - suitable for a plane flight of relatively short duration, say Los Angeles to Albuquerque or New York to Atlanta. But, there's no need to carry the book off the aircraft; leave it in the seat pocket with the emergency instructions.

4.0 out of 5 stars An Interesting Read, July 3, 2009

By 

Amadeus (Pittsburgh, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tilt: A Skewed History of the Tower of Pisa (Mass Market Paperback)

Tilt is a nice, enjoyable, and interesting read. It is a quick, little book (I finished it in a sitting), but quite engaging. If you are in search of a scholarly tome on the subject or even an exhaustive history of the Tower this might be a bit light for you, but if you are looking for a fun read on an interesting subject then I would recommend it.

3.0 out of 5 stars The famous mistake of a tower., June 18, 2007

By 

Kevin M Quigg (Gettysburg, Pennsylvania United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Tilt: A Skewed History of the Tower of Pisa (Mass Market Paperback)

Shrady does a good review of how the Leaning Tower of Pisa came about. It was due to building the tower on land that once belonged to a bog. When some of the sand shifted, the tower (companile) leaned. In 17 commissions over the years, more damage was done until finally in 1990, the tower was in danger of falling over. This is an interesting book about the history of the city state of Pisa, and its remarkable tower and cathedral. The book made me want to visit this historic building.

This is a nice read about an interesting building and place. I actually learned something about architecture and soil conditions.