"As the sixteenth century opened, members of the patriciate were increasingly withdrawing from trade, desiring to be seen as "gentlemen in fact" as well as "gen

When William Dean Howells was 25, he was appointed to a diplomatic post in Venice by then-President Abraham Lincoln. This engrossing collection of essays and sk

An extraordinary chronicle of Venice, its people, and its grandeur Thomas Madden’s majestic, sprawling history of Venice is the first full portrait of the cit