Venice: Lion City: The Religion of Empire

The tiny island city-state of Venice was, for a time, one of the greatest maritime powers the world has ever known, its influence extending far beyond the Mediterranean. Garry Wills, well known for his studies of American political history, travels far afield to explore Renaissance Venice at the height of its power.

Venice, Wills writes, was "not an ideal state." Its champions would claim otherwise; they held a view of Venetian "exceptionalism," an idea that the city-state, like its classical Athenian model, was somehow destined for great things. It achieved many of them, gathering phenomenal wealth through the monopolies of its many guilds, floating great navies that controlled the seas, and building a splendid, renowned city. Wills profiles the leaders, great families, corporations, and institutions (including what he calls a "gerontocracy" of elder statesmen) that allowed such growth, as well as women, ordinary workers, and other actors who do not often figure in histories of the period. He examines the religious beliefs and worldly wisdom that motivated and justified the Venetian impulse to achieve wealth and power, and he takes his readers on a learned tour of Venice's architectural and artistic glories--many of which survive today.

No, it was not ideal, Wills concludes, "just better than most of those around it--better able to sustain, over a long period, whatever ideals it had." His account of those ideals and the city they made will appeal to a wide audience of readers. --Gregory McNamee