Rating: 
Summary: Not the best edition.
Review: A better book could not have fallen into my hands! An American professor in Venice recommended it, and after I read it I was only sorry I had not read it before going to Italy. The mystery of its medieval, rather Renaissance cities (Florence, Venice, among others) would have been clearer; even today's Italians' ways and personality. So much a product of Renaissance Italy...and its wonderful heritage from Ancient Rome. I truly recommend this book for Italy lovers, anyone going there soon, or for the sheer joy of reading a good history book. Jacob Burckkhardt is one of the most intelligent, enlightened historians I know.
Rating: 
Summary: The Ciivilization of the Renaissance in Italy
Review: A better book could not have fallen into my hands! An American professor in Venice recommended it, and after I read it I was only sorry I had not read it before going to Italy. The mystery of its medieval, rather Renaissance cities (Florence, Venice, among others) would have been clearer; even today's Italians' ways and personality. So much a product of Renaissance Italy...and its wonderful heritage from Ancient Rome. I truly recommend this book for Italy lovers, anyone going there soon, or for the sheer joy of reading a good history book. Jacob Burckkhardt is one of the most intelligent, enlightened historians I know.
Rating: 
Summary: Good, but outdated and severely lacking.
Review: For better or worse, this classic has shaped the concept of the "Renaissance" for most non-professionals. A century plus later, much of it still works, and is full of fascinating stories, asides, and bits of information.
Keep in mind, though, that it IS a century old. I cringed every time I encountered phrases like this (in the Introduction):
"[taxes were]...collected by those cruel and vexatious methods without which, it is true, it is impossible to obtain any money from Orientals."
Similarly, his take on women's status of the period is ill informed, if not wholly unfounded. Of course, most of the scholarship in this area happened in the last 50 years, so Burckhardt is not to blame.
Most importantly, most scholars now believe that many "renaissance" elements actually occurred in the 12th century, not 15th (for example, the idea of man as an individual). This seriously undermines his entire thesis- that a revival of classical values, joined with the unique Italian setting was responsible for the Renaissance.
It's an interesting thesis, and attractive in its simplicity. It also does not hold up under closer examination.
Overall, it's a classic for good reason, and well worth a look-- surprisingly, it's also quite well written, with clear, engaging prose and wonderful anecdotes.
It should N-O-T be seen as the ultimate guide to the Renaissance, though, or anything close to it!
Rating:
Summary: Good, but outdated and severely lacking.
Review: For better or worse, this classic has shaped the concept of the "Renaissance" for most non-professionals. A century plus later, much of it still works, and is full of fascinating stories, asides, and bits of information.
Keep in mind, though, that it IS a century old. I cringed every time I encountered phrases like this (in the Introduction):
"[taxes were]...collected by those cruel and vexatious methods without which, it is true, it is impossible to obtain any money from Orientals."
Similarly, his take on women's status of the period is ill informed, if not wholly unfounded. Of course, most of the scholarship in this area happened in the last 50 years, so Burckhardt is not to blame.
Most importantly, most scholars now believe that many "renaissance" elements actually occurred in the 12th century, not 15th (for example, the idea of man as an individual). This seriously undermines his entire thesis- that a revival of classical values, joined with the unique Italian setting was responsible for the Renaissance.
It's an interesting thesis, and attractive in its simplicity. It also does not hold up under closer examination.
Overall, it's a classic for good reason, and well worth a look-- surprisingly, it's also quite well written, with clear, engaging prose and wonderful anecdotes.
It should N-O-T be seen as the ultimate guide to the Renaissance, though, or anything close to it!
Rating:
Summary: Burckhardt the Prescient Historian
Review: For much of the last 139 years, Jacob Burckhardt's work has been dismissed as too "Nineteenth Century" for serious study: more literature than serious history. So much the pity. What Burckhardt left us in The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy is a magisterial, thematic, understanding of the Italian Renaissance that is far more 1990's in its observations and human understandings than its original 1860's. It is a shame that Burckhardt's famous pupil, Nietzsche, didn't learn a little more balance and discretion at his elder's feet. This book is a joy to read. Like Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, this work shows us how history can engage the spirit, and how far off the mark some modern historians have gone with their more "scholarly" work.
Rating:
Summary: Burckhardt the Prescient Historian
Review: For much of the last 139 years, Jacob Burckhardt's work has been dismissed as too "Nineteenth Century" for serious study: more literature than serious history. So much the pity. What Burckhardt left us in The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy is a magisterial, thematic, understanding of the Italian Renaissance that is far more 1990's in its observations and human understandings than its original 1860's. It is a shame that Burckhardt's famous pupil, Nietzsche, didn't learn a little more balance and discretion at his elder's feet. This book is a joy to read. Like Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, this work shows us how history can engage the spirit, and how far off the mark some modern historians have gone with their more "scholarly" work.
Rating:
Summary: Opens our eyes to the origins of our own world
Review: I was around twelve when my grandmother mentioned having heard a speech delivered by Woodrow Wilson.For me, until that moment, Woodrow Wilson had been in the same category with Julius Caesar: people who lived a long time ago. But for my grandmother, only Caesar could be in that category: Wilson was an early contemporary of her own. I began to realize that the citizens of the past were real people, that the lives of the past were lives as large and rich and strange as our own. Everybody who survives high school can remember at least one teacher who made the study of history look like a matter of memorizing names and dates. Such teachers often manage to create in their students a permanent allergy to the study of history. But it has been two hundred years since they could do so with a good conscience. Voltaire was the first modern writer of history--we might say, the first historian of culture. Chiefly through his masterpiece The Age of Louis XIV, he established the principle that history is not just about who ruled when and who killed whom--that it is about all the aspects of human culture, all the means--arts and entertainment, philosophy and religion and science, as well as economics, politics, and war--by which we seek to create permanent triumphs of mind over the natural forces of chaos and entropy. We need not fool ourselves: those forces will finally destroy us and all our works. But while we live, we can make life richer for ourselves and for those who will follow us. The writer from whom I first learned that historical writing could be such an enriching force was Burckhardt. The Renaissance was indeed the modern rebirth of ancient culture, but what makes it important is that through that rebirth people rediscovered a truth that the ancient Ionians had known and that had been lost sight of for more than a thousand years: that the natural world, and people as part of it, were worthy objects of study and understanding--not just creatures and tools of God. With this discovery, made permanent because it could now be broadcast by the new technology of printing, begins the process of modernity--the process that still continues to increase our world's psychological distance from the ancient and the medieval world.
Rating:
Summary: The Man Who Invented the Renaissance
Review: Jacob Burckhardt had one of those rare minds who could construct a new synthesis out of thought, government, art, and culture -- and who, for the first time, made it possible to talk about the Renaissance as a moment in the history of Western man. This is a very dense work with flashes of genius as well as long scholarly footnotes with extensively quoted Italian and Latin. In a book by a dullard, this would be excruciating. But Burckhardt is anything but as he manages his material like a Moscow taxi driver: by accelerating and then coasting. When you least expect it, another epiphany draws you in. Burckhardt's Renaissance was an incredible high in the history of mankind. The Medicis, Sforzas, and Malatestas strut their way through the history of the period; Dante, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Bramante create works of the imagination that still overpower us; popes like Julius II, Alexander VI, and Leo X combine worldliness with spirituality (sometimes); and even the average man has a face and a voice for the first time. This book will make your blood race.
Rating:
Summary: The Man Who Invented the Renaissance
Review: Jacob Burckhardt had one of those rare minds who could construct a new synthesis out of thought, government, art, and culture -- and who, for the first time, made it possible to talk about the Renaissance as a moment in the history of Western man. This is a very dense work with flashes of genius as well as long scholarly footnotes with extensively quoted Italian and Latin. In a book by a dullard, this would be excruciating. But Burckhardt is anything but as he manages his material like a Moscow taxi driver: by accelerating and then coasting. When you least expect it, another epiphany draws you in. Burckhardt's Renaissance was an incredible high in the history of mankind. The Medicis, Sforzas, and Malatestas strut their way through the history of the period; Dante, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Bramante create works of the imagination that still overpower us; popes like Julius II, Alexander VI, and Leo X combine worldliness with spirituality (sometimes); and even the average man has a face and a voice for the first time. This book will make your blood race.
Rating:
Summary: a Renaissance study of literary excellence
Review: The breadth of the author's knowledge about such a wide variety of relevant topics--cultural, literary, historical--spices the book with bits of really superb thumbnail studies and commentary. Burkhardt is an able defender of the value of culture and an able critic of those who would replace freedom with force. I can see why Hermann Hesse got so much out of reading him.
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