The Bookseller of Florence

The Story of the Manuscripts That Illuminated the Renaissance

De: Ross King

Narrado por: James Cameron Stewart

The Renaissance in Florence conjures images of beautiful frescoes and elegant buildings - the dazzling handiwork of the city's skilled artists and architects. But equally important for the centuries to follow were geniuses of a different sort: Florence's manuscript hunters, scribes, scholars, and booksellers, who blew the dust off a thousand years of history and, through the discovery and diffusion of ancient knowledge, imagined a new and enlightened world.

At the heart of this activity, which best-selling author Ross King relates in his exhilarating new book, was a remarkable man: Vespasiano da Bisticci. Born in 1422, he became what a friend called "the king of the world's booksellers". At a time when all books were made by hand, over four decades Vespasiano produced and sold many hundreds of volumes from his bookshop, which also became a gathering spot for debate and discussion. Besides repositories of ancient wisdom by the likes of Plato, Aristotle, and Quintilian, his books were works of art in their own right, copied by talented scribes and illuminated by the finest miniaturists. His clients included a roll call of popes, kings, and princes across Europe who wished to burnish their reputations by founding magnificent libraries.

©2021 Ross King (P)2021 Tantor

Integration of history, culture and the arts of the renaissance

Great reed and fantastic facts of far more than booksellers and Florence and even more than Italy

Great history

Ross King writes with amazing detail about a character who I did not know about a time I thought I knew. So many historical characters come and go in this book. And so much information about the transition of script books to print eBooks.. It’s just a wonderful story. I loved all of it.

The narrator aside, it was a great book.

As others have mentioned, the narrator was the only downside. I appreciated learning about this aspect of the Florence Rennsisance.

Narrator Ruined Book

In future I will look for the narrator’s name before purchasing and will not buy anything narrated by James Cameron Stuart. In every sentence he seems to be showing off his perfect OxBridge accent and perfectly pronounced foreign names without ever actually interpreting the story and making it interesting. Every sentence is declaimed with the same stentorian tone, the same rhythm and pacing. Boring and insulting assaults on the ears.

Excellent book, terribly read

This is a book about Italy; it is read by a man who can only butcher Italian in unfortunately typical British fashion. why choose a Brit to read a book that has absolutely nothing to do with Britain? even in English his cadences and intonation are boring.