History Of The Italian People

Gracefully written and heartfelt. Procacci throws a wide net (Italian history since the year 1000), but the format of his book helps the reader keep things straight: each chapter covering a certain period consists of subsections on five different city-states, so that a reader wishing to read only about, say, Florence, can easily follow just that strand. Procacci focuses on political history -- he characterizes his approach as "ethical-political," -- with the occasional foray into social, economic and cultural history when necessary. This book was originally was written for a French readership; I read it in Italian. I hope the English edition features the 1997 the afterword, which is quite moving: Procacci reflects soberly and sincerely on his formation and his practice as a historian, and yet he is writing about events that he lived through, and he keenly conveys his own hopes and disappointments.