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The House of Medici: Its Rise and Fall | 
 enlarge | Author: Christopher Hibbert
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Category: Book
List Price: $16.00
Buy Used: $3.53
You Save: $12.47 (78%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  47 reviews
Sales Rank: 26089
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 364
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9 x 5.9 x 1
ISBN: 0688053394
Dewey Decimal Number: 945.5105
EAN: 9780688053390
ASIN: 0688053394
Publication Date: June 2, 1999
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
It was a dynasty with more wealth, passion, and power than the houses of Windsor, Kennedy, and Rockefeller combined. It shaped all of Europe and controlled politics, scientists, artists, and even popes, for three hundred years. It was the house of Medici, patrons of Botticelli, Michelangelo and Galileo, benefactors who turned Florence into a global power center, and then lost it all.The House of Medici picks up where Barbara Tuchman's Hibbert delves into the lives of the Medici family, whose legacy of increasing self-indulgence and sexual dalliance eventually led to its self-destruction. With twenty-four pages of black-and-white illustrations, this timeless saga is one of Quill's strongest-selling paperbacks.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 42 more reviews...
Good Overview of a Grand Dynasty August 16, 2008
Good read although I was surprised to find typos which is more a comment about the editor/publisher.
Overall, a fluid and entertaining read. Gives a good idea of the social and political life in Florence and within the family.
 calling all history buffs May 31, 2008
did you know the king of England, the King of France, the King of Spain and the Medici's were all related? I didnt but I do now...man, this a wonderful book. Not an easy read but a wonderful read. COuldnt put it down. Stayed up till all hours of the night reading and reading!
Really a beautiful and sad family.
 Good intro to a very famous family April 11, 2008
Normally i dont buy books authored by Christopher Hibbert because i dont like his style.I think he's style is dry,stale and not at all enjoyable.But when i found this book in a book fair for just a dollar, i jumped at the chance.But the fact is that the book is a typical Hibbert book.Very dry and reads like a legal document of 5000 pages.But at least you get to find who the Medicis were and their contributions to Florence.The book gets more interesting in thre last 150 pages.I think its because the last Medicis were so bad and rotten that at least you get to enjoy their problems and how that lead to their fall.I think the book can also help you understand some of the sights, monuments and churches in Florence since they put so much money into them.But, again, Mr Hibbert does a lousy job with the story and i found myself reading faster so i would finish the book.
 Just the Facts, Ma'm April 2, 2008
16 out of 19 found this review helpful
This isn't a very deep study. Most readers who have studied Renaissance history, or visited Florence with a decent guidebook in hand, will already be familiar with the early Medicis - the bankers and founders of the dynasty. If not, The House of Medici will freshen your memory. I read it some time ago. I came upon it while packing some books to donate to a college book fair, and it set off a meditation on economics:
Look at the Medici! It's easy to know them; the greatest artists of their lifetimes painted and sculpted their images. Their tastes are evidenced by the palaces they bequeathed to the public of later ages. Their mental capacities are proven by the scientists and philosphers they supported and corresponded with. If ever there was a pure entrepreneur, it was Cosimo dei Medici, and many of his heirs were financial geniuses in a world of entrepreneurship. But did their investments have a trickle-down effect? Did their wealth pull the peasantry up by the bootstraps? Or were they taxed to death by a federal bureaucracy? In fact, the vast wealth of the Medicis had no impact on the economic circumstances of the very vast majority of Italians, the peasantry, who lived in a kind of toilsome poverty that we can only envision by traveling to the hill villages of Burma or Bhutan. So what did they do with their wealth, those grandiose capitalists? They endowed institutions. They patronized artists,scientists, musicians, and artisans of humbler sorts.
What a paltry bunch our rich folk are today! What billionaire in America maintains an orchestra in his palace? Or even a string quartet? What gazillionaire has built herself a home that will survive to astonish Martian tourists 600 years from now? Poets, paleontologists, and paupers! Think how Larry Ellison or Warren Buffett could magnify your lot in life without feeling a pinch! Sculptors! Couldn't you find it in your art to produce an immortal masterpiece for the tomb of Bill Gates?
On the other hand, most Americans today, even the working poor, live in a comfort and security even Lorenzo the Magnificent couldn't buy. But it isn't entrepreneurship that has made us all miniature Medicis; it's technology and the productivity that results from technology. Galileo had to curry Medici patronage and cringe at Medici frowns, but it was Galileo who left us the foundation of our science-based prosperity. All the freedom from taxation that the Medicis enjoyed didn't put porridge in one peasant's bowl; the high wages for labor and high taxes on wealth of the modern redistributive democracy have put steak on almost everyone's plate. Unless you were a Medici, my capitalist friend, you're probably happier living here and now than in small government Renaissance Tuscany.
Not Up to the Usual Hibbert Stuff March 4, 2008
I have read almost all of Chris Hibbert's works across all the historical streams he writes. He is a good narrative historian with a deft control of his subject and a good story teller knowing just what to put in and what to leave out.
I read this book to get a better understanding of the Medici and Hibbert, like a lot of other historians on this subject matter, is strong on how the Medici came on scene, the sources or their wealth the advent of Cosimo. Though after Cosimo the streams of revenue get less decribed and become more or less assumed and then more or less dropped from the narrative.
He also describes well the first patriarches contributions to the arts and architecture... but there is little, for example, about Brunelessci.
From the early advent a generation is more of less skipped and we end up with Lorenzo the Magnificent and his legacy, but there is also less detail of the events surrounding Savonarola and the terror in which he held Florence. There is also great explantion of the vissicitudes of the alliances between Venice, Milano, and Rome. But these again are left with huge gaps which leave one craving for more knowledge.
Also the one thing that frankly annoyed me was how the narrative basically petered-out in the latter generations. Of course that is exactly what happenned, but I think that Hibbert could have build a better narrative stream about the reasons for the demise of the Medici. In this sense he also does not describe the economics or business of the family in these latter stages. That would be good since the economic success bounds the ability of the Medici to influence events.
I was rather dissapointed with the entry from Hibbert.
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