As a preface, let me first address all these reviews bemoaning the Bibliobazaar edition - under which this review will no doubt be posted by Amazon. Apparently, it's a digitally scanned edition of some sort, chock-full of typos and even, one reviewer reports, having one chapter printed twice, and for $20.00! Just save yourself the consternation expressed here by so many and buy a used copy of the Penguin Classics edition. It's impeccably edited with an elucidating forward. It's impossible to go wrong with Penguin, and for half the price!
Now, to the book, it's rather difficult to review, as it covers so many diverse aspects of Italian society at the time (times rather, the book spans over two centuries), is full of allusions to people of whom the average, educated reader will never have heard, and, by Burckhardt's own self-deprecating admission, consists of "a string of marginal notes" concerning the place and era.
Still, it's all very interesting. Essentially, I should say that it's a sort of scholarly love letter to a time and place that enchanted Burckhardt - not without its qualifications concerning the dark side of it all. Indeed, Burckhardt spends as much time describing the depredations of the condottieri and such as he does on the glories of Florence.
What was of most interest to me was the light it shed on Nietzsche - who, for the record, was far from a pupil of Burckhardt. Nietzsche's brilliance was such that he attained a full professorship at the age of 24. But there are quotes cited from figures such as Pico della Mirandola that do ring a bell to any devotee of Nietzsche: "...that thou mightiest be free to shape and to overcome thyself." Compare this remark to Nietzsche's famous exhortation that "Man is something which must be overcome!" It lends a bit of credibility to Lord Russell's unfortunate, curt summation of Nietzsche's philosophy as "I wish I had lived in Florence in the age of the Medicis."
So - my summation of this book - a very lively and informative work by a man enchanted of an age and era.
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... written long ago it still remains one of the best and most interesting books about the birth of the ...
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Yaaseen
excellent for undergraduate history
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 30, 2020Michael Vickers
Good delivery. Nice copy
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 2, 2018
