Customer Reviews

A Traveller's History of Italy (Traveller's Histories)

5 star:		(0)
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3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

It's a lot of information to absorb, but overview of the development of modern Italy is interesting. As someone who knew little of the history of Italy, the book enriched my travel experiences in Italy. The timelines are a good reference. There could be better maps for those of us who are unfamiliar with Italian geography. Unfortunately, the book is poorly bound and my copy fell apart almost immediately.

If this book had been called "A brief history of Italy", I'd have given it four stars. As a short but reasonably thorough overview of Italian history, it does a pretty good job.

But as for being a "traveller's history"...it fails. I was planning a trip to Italy and wanted a book that would tell me the history behind the things I was seeing ("And on your left, you see a statue from the early 16th century..."). As such, this book is useless. Its historical content is in no way geared towards the traveler.

If you want a quick read on Italian history, great. But don't take it on your travels.