Florence: The Biography of a City (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description

This book is as captivating as the city itself. Hibbert's gift is weaving political, social and art history into an elegantly readable and marvelously lively whole. The author's book on Florence will also be at once a history and a guide book and will be enhanced by splendid photographs and illustrations and line drawings which will describe all the buildings and treasures of the city.

About the Author

Christopher Hibbert was born in 1924 and educated at Radley and Oriel College, Oxford. He served as an infantry officer during the war and was awarded the Military Cross in 1945. His many highly acclaimed books include the following titles: The Destruction of Lord Raglan (which won the Heinemann Award for Literature in 1962), London: The Biography of a City, The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici, The Great Mutiny: India 1857, The French Revolution, Garibaldi and His Enemies, Rome: The Biography of a City, Elizabeth I: A Personal History of the Virgin Queen, Nelson: A Personal History, George III: A Personal History and The Marlboroughs: John and Sarah Churchill 1650 - 1744. Christopher Hibbert is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an Hon. D. Litt. of Leicester University. He is married with two sons and a daughter, and lives in Henley-on-Thames.

Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd (October 27, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140166440
• ISBN-13: 978-0140166446
• Product Dimensions: 9.7 x 7.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #783,965 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars If gossip about the British upper class is your thing....., March 1, 2009

By	Ben from Seattle (Seattle) - See all my reviews

The prolific Christopher Hibbert was memorialized at his death as the quintessential popular historian, responsible for a wide variety of well-researched, highly entertaining works. I really enjoyed his one-volume account of the rise and fall of the Medici, the best introduction I know of to the subject.

This book too is a breezy, readable, and concise account of the rise of Florence from its obscure Roman days through the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. Much of the Renaissance material is necessarily a rehash of the Medici book, but with a wider scope and a guidebook's attention to individual buildings, treated in great detail in the very useful appendix.

What inspired my only 3-star rating for this otherwise excellent book is the author's descent into shameless gossip-mongering and nationalistic myopia in the post-Medici section of the book. I've long wanted to know what happened to Florence after its Golden Age, but this book choses to focus far too much on individuals in its treatment of 18th - 20th C. Florence, and far too little on long-range trends, historical overview, and thoughtful analysis.

If Hibbert is to be taken seriously, Florence after the Medicis was notable mostly for being a playground for the English idle rich, whose colorful scandals, dinner parties, and bon mots give him no end of pleasure in describing. I really threw up my hands when even his account of the grim years of facism and the Second World War feature prominent descriptions of British hostesses and husbands; I really wonder what an native Florentine might make of this perspective on Italian history seen as mere background for the adventures of globe-trotting Brits (with a few Yanks thrown in for good measure).

This is popular history as an excuse for name-dropping, a good bet for attracting a mass audience, but hardly a serious attempt at, as the subtitle promises, "A Biography of a City."