"Based on wide reading of the available secondary and printedsources, A History of Florence represents the achievement ofa lifetime's devotion to the study of the city. Moreover, Najemy'scategories of analysis should provoke debates and conversations forfuture lifetimes." (Renaissance and Reformation, 2009)
"There is much to praise about this book. It is a modelhistorical synthesis of the history of a great premodern Europeancity. It is also a sophisticated political history in whichclass-based ideas and values matter as much as individual detailsof political events." (The Catholic Historical Review, July2010)"[This] is the best history of Florence in any language, andit will long remain so, for Najemy has mastered the
relevantliterature more thoroughly than any other historian in livingmemory." (Times Literary Supplement)
"John Najemy is a pre-eminent historian of Renaissance Florence... a scholar of learning, imagination and intellectualpenetration, with a profound knowledge of Florentine history fromthe thirteenth to the sixteenth century and with a remarkable rangeof interests in political, social and intellectual history. Therehas been no credible attempt to write a history of Florence in thisperiod since the time of Perrens's multi-volume work, finished in1883. Najemy has risen admirably to the challenge. He hasassimilated the vast secondary literature on Florence, from thebeginning of the thirteenth to the late sixteenth century. Therange of his analysis and explication stretches across a vast rangeof fundamental social, political, economic, diplomatic, militaryand biographical topics. Nor is Najemy indifferent to intellectualhistory, especially questions involving political thought andideology. This book is no mere synthesis of other scholars' work.Indeed, Najemy offers a distinctive interpretation, one which hasalready stimulated controversy and will doubtless continue to doso." (Reviews in History)
"Highly recommended." (Choice)
"An extraordinary accomplishment. Deserves rich praise as afundamentally new and authoritative interpretation of four keycenturies of this remarkable city's development."Speculum"[Najemy], a veteran Renaissance historianoffers a big and impressive survey of the Florentine city-state.... One of the justifications for the book [is] the need foran updated and accessible synthesis of the superabundance of recentspecialized scholarship on Florence. He succeeds admirably at thattask ... [and] manages to explain and contextualize detailedscholarship while remaining a lively and engaging politicalnarrative. [It] will surely become the definitive narrative ofmedieval and Renaissance Florence, a point of departure forstudents of Florentine politics and culture as well as a majorinterpretive statement providing much for specialists to engagewith for some time." (Sixteenth Century Journal)"A masterly survey of a generation of scholarship that has openedup many new perspectives, by an expert guide to the complexpolitical society of medieval and Renaissance Florence."
--Christine Shaw, of Cambridge University
"This is a marvellous book and I suspect it will become aclassic. John Najemy has an astonishing and probably unparalleledmastery of the scholarship on Florence and has accomplished aprecise and beautifully written synthetic history of the Medievaland Renaissance city."
--Carol Lansing, University of California, SantaBarbara
