City of Fortune, Roger Crowley
City of Fortune, Roger Crowley
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City of Fortune
How Venice Ruled the Seas

Author: Roger Crowley

Narrator: Edoardo Ballerini

Unabridged: 14 hr 10 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 05/10/2013

Synopsis

The New York Times bestselling author of Empires of the Sea charts Venice’s astounding five-hundred-year voyage to the pinnacle of power in an epic story that stands unrivaled for drama, intrigue, and sheer opulent majesty. City of Fortune traces the full arc of the Venetian imperial saga, from the ill-fated Fourth Crusade, which culminates in the sacking of Constantinople in 1204, to the Ottoman-Venetian War of 1499–1503, which sees the Ottoman Turks supplant the Venetians as the preeminent naval power in the Mediterranean. In between are three centuries of Venetian maritime dominance, during which a tiny city of “lagoon dwellers” grow into the richest place on earth. Drawing on firsthand accounts of pitched sea battles, skillful negotiations, and diplomatic maneuvers, Crowley paints a vivid picture of this avaricious, enterprising people and the bountiful lands that came under their dominion. From the opening of the spice routes to the clash between Christianity and Islam, Venice played a leading role in the defining conflicts of its time—the reverberations of which are still being felt today.

“The rise and fall of Venice’s empire is an irresistible story and [Roger] Crowley, with his rousing descriptive gifts and scholarly attention to detail, is its perfect chronicler.”—Financial Times

About Roger Crowley

Roger Crowley was born in 1951 and spent part of his childhood in Malta. He read English at Cambridge University, then taught English in Istanbul, where he developed a strong interest in the history of Turkey. He has traveled throughout the Mediterranean basin over many years and has a wide-ranging knowledge of its geography and its past. Roger has a reading knowledge of Turkish, several European languages, and Latin. He is the author of 1453: The Holy War for Constantinople and the Clash of Islam and the West.

Reviews

Goodreads review by George on May 23, 2017

"City of Fortune: How Venice Ruled the Seas" by Roger Crowley is a fascinating account of the Venetian empire between the years 1200 and 1500. This book is not a dry recitation of dates, names, and battles. I found it to be an engaging narrative about a remarkable city and its exploits throughout th......more

Goodreads review by Edoardo on December 03, 2017

Most of the places where we live are obstinately, resolutely earth bound: think of maundering suburbs, the plate-glass high rises of financial centres, the re-gentrified areas of inner cities. None of these suggest anything other than themselves: places where people live, sealed off from heaven abov......more

Goodreads review by Tim on May 22, 2024

The wealth of fascinating detail makes this a compelling read. That and the fact it's excellently written.......more

Goodreads review by Rindis on August 23, 2018

Crowley's book on Venice is about the Stato da Mar, and as such, is exactly one of the things I've been on the lookout for. The first section starts with Venice's mercantile rise, and then goes into the story of the Fourth Crusade. He's fairly neutral on everyone's participation later on, but it's in......more

Goodreads review by Kuszma on January 04, 2020

Crowley az ismeretterjesztő könyvek szerzői közül abba a szűk csoportba tartozik, akiknek az újabb munkáit lelkesülten lehet várni, hogy aztán összemérve az elsővel, a csúcsok csúcsával, azt mondja az ember: hát, egy pöttyet kevésbé jó. De ettől még várjuk tovább lelkesülten az újabb munkáit. A Kalmá......more

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