Download or read book Medici Money written by Tim Parks and published by Profile Books. This book was released on 2013-08-22 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Medici are famous as the rulers of Florence at the high point of the Renaissance. Their power derived from the family bank, and this book tells the fascinating, frequently bloody story of the family and the dramatic development and collapse of their bank (from Cosimo who took it over in 1419 to his grandson Lorenzo the Magnificent who presided over its precipitous decline). The Medici faced two apparently insuperable problems: how did a banker deal with the fact that the Church regarded interest as a sin and had made it illegal? How in a small republic like Florence could he avoid having his wealth taken away by taxation? But the bank became indispensable to the Church. And the family completely subverted Florence's claims to being democratic. They ran the city. Medici Money explores a crucial moment in the passage from the Middle Ages to the Modern world, a moment when our own attitudes to money and morals were being formed. To read this book is to understand how much the Renaissance has to tell us about our own world. Medici Money is one of the launch titles in a new series, Atlas Books, edited by James Atlas. Atlas Books pairs fine writers with stories of the economic forces that have shaped the world, in a new genre - the business book as literature.
Download or read book Medici Money written by Tim Parks and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2005 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Their name is a byword for immense wealth and power, but before their renown as art patrons and noblemen, the Medici built their fortune on banking-specifically, on lending money at interest. Banking in the fifteenth century, even at the height of the Renaissance, meant running afoul of the Catholic Church's prohibition against usury. It required more than merely financial skills to make a profit, and the legendary Medici-most famously Cosimo and Lorenzo ("the Magnificent")-were masterly in wielding the political, diplomatic, military, and even metaphysical tools that were needed to maintain their family's position. In this brisk and witty narrative, Tim Parks uncovers the intrigues, dodges, and moral qualities that gave the Medici their edge. Vividly evoking the richness of the Florentine Renaissance and the Medici's glittering circle, replete with artists, popes, and kings, Medici Money is a brilliant look into the origins of modern banking and its troubled relationship with art and religion.
Download or read book Medici Money written by Tim Parks and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2006-04-25 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A swift and brilliant synthesis of finance, politics, and history.”—Ben Sisario, New York Times Book Review Before they achieved renown as patrons of the arts and de facto rulers of Florence, the Medici family earned their fortune in banking. But even at the height of the Renaissance, charging interest of any kind meant running afoul of the Catholic Church’s ban on usury. Tim Parks reveals how the legendary Medicis—Cosimo and Lorenzo “the Magnificent” in particular—used the diplomatic, military, and even metaphysical tools at hand, along with a healthy dose of intrigue and wit, to further their fortunes as well as their family’s standing.
Download or read book The Medici written by Paul Strathern and published by Random House. This book was released on 2018-02-22 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A dazzling piece of Italian history of the infamous family that become one of the most powerful in Europe, weaving its history with Renaissance greats from Leonardo da Vinci to Galileo Against the background of an age which saw the rebirth of ancient and classical learning, The Medici is a remarkably modern story of power, money and ambition. Strathern paints a vivid narrative of the dramatic rise and fall of the Medici family in Florence, as well as the Italian Renaissance which they did so much to sponsor and encourage. Strathern also follows the lives of many of the great Renaissance artists with whom the Medici had dealings, including Leonardo, Michelangelo and Donatello; as well as scientists like Galileo and Pico della Mirandola; and the fortunes of those members of the Medici family who achieved success away from Florence, including the two Medici popes and Catherine de' Médicis, who became Queen of France and played a major role in that country through three turbulent reigns. ‘A great overview of one family's centuries-long role in changing the face of Europe’ Irish Independent
Download or read book The Medici Conspiracy written by Peter Watson and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2007-06-12 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story begins, as stories do in all good thrillers, with a botched robbery and a police chase. Eight Apuleian vases of the fourth century B.C. are discovered in the swimming pool of a German-based art smuggler. More valuable than the recovery of the vases, however, is the discovery of the smuggler's card index detailing his deals and dealers. It reveals the existence of a web of tombaroli—tomb raiders— who steal classical artifacts, and a network of dealers and smugglers who spirit them out of Italy and into the hands of wealthy collectors and museums. Peter Watson, a former investigative journalist for the London Sunday Times and author of two previous exposés of art world scandals, names the key figures in this network that has depleted Europe's classical artifacts. Among the loot are the irreplaceable and highly collectable vases of Euphronius, the equivalent in their field of the sculpture of Bernini or the painting of Michelangelo. The narrative leads to the doors of some major institutions: Sothebys, the Getty Museum in L.A., the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York among them. Filled with great characters and human drama, The Medici Conspiracy authoritatively exposes another shameful round in one of the oldest games in the world: theft, smuggling and duplicitous dealing, all in the name of art.
Download or read book The Medici Boy written by John L'Heureux and published by House of Stratus. This book was released on 2014-04-07 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While creating his famous bronze of David and Goliath, Donatello’s passion for his beautiful model and part time rent boy, Agnolo, ignites a dangerous jealousy that ultimately leads to murder. Luca, the complex and conflicted assistant, will sacrifice all to save Donatello, even his master’s friend--the great patron of art, Cosimo de’ Medici.
Download or read book The Ascent of Money written by Niall Ferguson and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008-11-13 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 10th anniversary edition, with new chapters on the crash, Chimerica, and cryptocurrency "[An] excellent, just in time guide to the history of finance and financial crisis." —The Washington Post "Fascinating." —Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek In this updated edition, Niall Ferguson brings his classic financial history of the world up to the present day, tackling the populist backlash that followed the 2008 crisis, the descent of "Chimerica" into a trade war, and the advent of cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, with his signature clarity and expert lens. The Ascent of Money reveals finance as the backbone of history, casting a new light on familiar events: the Renaissance enabled by Italian foreign exchange dealers, the French Revolution traced back to a stock market bubble, the 2008 crisis traced from America's bankruptcy capital, Memphis, to China's boomtown, Chongqing. We may resent the plutocrats of Wall Street but, as Ferguson argues, the evolution of finance has rivaled the importance of any technological innovation in the rise of civilization. Indeed, to study the ascent and descent of money is to study the rise and fall of Western power itself.
Download or read book The Black Prince of Florence written by Catherine Fletcher and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Family tree -- Glossary of names -- Timeline -- Map -- A note on money -- Prologue -- Book one: The bastard son -- Book two: The obedient nephew -- Book three: The prince alone -- Afterword: Alessandro's ethnicity.
Download or read book The Medici Effect written by Frans Johansson and published by Harvard Business Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines why creativity and insight are incredibly vibrant at the intersection of domains, disciplines, cultures and fields and tells us how to get to those places. This book reveals the core principles that reign when divergent concepts are combined.
Download or read book The Family Medici written by Mary Hollingsworth and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2018-03-06 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Having founded the bank that became the most powerful in Europe in the fifteenth century, the Medici gained massive political power in Florence, raising the city to a peak of cultural achievement and becoming its hereditary dukes. Among their number were no fewer than three popes and a powerful and influential queen of France. Their influence brought about an explosion of Florentine art and architecture. Michelangelo, Donatello, Fra Angelico, and Leonardo were among the artists with whom they were socialized and patronized.Thus runs the "accepted view” of the Medici. However, Mary Hollingsworth argues that this is a fiction that has now acquired the status of historical fact. In truth, the Medici were as devious and immoral as the Borgias. In this dynamic new history, Hollingsworth argues that past narratives have focused on a sanitized view of the Medici—wise rulers, enlightened patrons of the arts, and fathers of the Renaissance—and their story was reinvented in the sixteenth century, mythologized by later generations of Medici who used this as a central prop for their legacy.Hollingsworth's revelatory re-telling of the story of the family Medici brings a fresh and exhilarating new perspective to the story behind the most powerful family of the Italian Renaissance.
Download or read book Death in Florence written by Paul Strathern and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-08-15 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the end of the fifteenth century, Florence was well established as the home of the Renaissance. As generous patrons to the likes of Botticelli and Michelangelo, the ruling Medici embodied the progressive humanist spirit of the age, and in Lorenzo de' Medici they possessed a diplomat capable of guarding the militarily weak city in a climate of constantly shifting allegiances. In Savonarola, an unprepossessing provincial monk, Lorenzo found his nemesis. Filled with Old Testament fury, Savonarola's sermons reverberated among a disenfranchised population, who preferred medieval Biblical certainties to the philosophical interrogations and intoxicating surface glitter of the Renaissance. The battle between these two men would be a fight to the death, a series of sensational events—invasions, trials by fire, the 'Bonfire of the Vanities', terrible executions and mysterious deaths—featuring a cast of the most important and charismatic Renaissance figures.In an exhilaratingly rich and deeply researched story, Paul Strathern reveals the paradoxes, self-doubts, and political compromises that made the battle for the soul of the Renaissance city one of the most complex and important moments in Western history.
Download or read book America s Medicis written by Suzanne Loebl and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2010-11-16 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From literary polymath Suzanne Loebl (the author of ten books, most recently the acclaimed America’s Art Museums) comes the captivating, first-of-its kind exploration into the philanthropic and cultural legacy of one of America’s wealthiest and most influential families: The Rockefellers. Fueled by John D. Rockefeller’s vast petroleum fortune, the entire family’s terrific passion for the arts transformed the artistic infrastructure of twentieth century America. Funding museums like the MoMA, the Cloisters, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of the Oriental Art at the University of Chicago, and commissioning major architectural projects like Rockefeller Center, Riverside Church, and Lincoln Center, the Rockefellers’ achievements forever changed the cultural landscape of the Western world. Loebl’s penetrating biography is the first book to deeply explore the family’s critical role as collectors and patrons of the arts.
Download or read book Magnifico written by Miles Unger and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Miles Unger's biography of this complex figure draws on primary research in Italian sources and on his intimate knowledge of Florence, where he lived for several years."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book The Ascent of Money written by Niall Ferguson and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ferguson tells the human story behind the evolution of money, from its origins in ancient Mesopotamia to the latest Wall Street upheavals. The author shows that finance is, in fact, the foundation of human progress.
Download or read book The Rise and Decline of the Medici Bank 1397 1494 written by Prof. Raymond de Roover and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2018-03-12 with total page 577 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The roots of modern capitalism go back to the Italian banking system of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. In the fifteenth century, the Medici Bank succeeded in overshadowing its competitors, the Bardi and the Peruzzi, who were the giants of the fourteenth century, and grew into a vast establishment with branches in most of the large cities of Western Europe. A study of its operations is essential to an understanding of the economic conditions in Europe in the fifteenth century. From a careful study of pertinent documents, including a set of libri segreti (confidential ledgers) discovered in 1950, Professor de Roover has reconstructed the details of the bank’s organization and operating methods; its loan policies, which reflected the Church’s doctrine on usury; its trading and industrial investments; its roles within the Florentine gild system and tax structure; and its activities as financial agent of the Church. He covers every aspect of the bank’s history, from its early years under the management of Giovanni di Bicci de’ Medici to its collapse with the expulsion of the Medici from Florence. “An invaluable contribution to the economic history of the period....A splendid book.”—Harry A. Miskimin, The American Economic Review “The most important work in English on a medieval or Renaissance bank.”—The Economist “The best book ever written on the medieval banking system.”—John T. Noonan, Jr., Harvard Law Review “The most authoritative treatment of its subject in any language.”—Rondo Cameron, The Accounting Review
Download or read book Good Magic written by Marina Medici and published by Touchstone. This book was released on 1992 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Enter the enchanted world of "Good Magic."..and discover the wisdom and the ways to conjure light and love and harmony into your life forever! * Preparation for magic * Your special magic places, in your home and in nature * The elements of magic * The four powers and how to harness them * Herbal potions * Flower incantations * Stones and crystals * The magic circle * Incantations to enhance life and love * Techniques for glimpsing into the future * And much, much more! "Good Magic" Open your life to a whole new world of wonderful possibilities.
Download or read book The Forgetting Time written by Sharon Guskin and published by . This book was released on 2017-02-07 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While a mother's life abruptly stops after receiving an emergency phone call from her son's preschool, a driven former Ivy League professor confronts the realities of his terminal diagnosis and helps a woman whose child has been missing for years.
