I’ve read a book or two on the Roman (and Byzantine) Empire, but my knowledge of the history of Italy basically covers the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, and then subsides into a quietly mumbled “and there was Van Gogh and they invented opera and some other stuff happened”, and then how World War II went for Italy, and then fades back out again. Seemed like it’d be worth filling in the middle bits more than that, which brought me to this book.
It did quite well at what the title says; it was a short history of Italy. Not a lot of depth to it, but it didn’t promise that, and instead delivered on being the brief overview that I wanted. An enjoyable read that set out with a goal in mind and met it well; check it out.1
- This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩