The Best History Book I’ve Read in Years

The Medici were bankers. Nobody remembers the loans. What people remember is the art, the poetry, the books — and they didn't even make it. They paid for it. That's legacy.

This week's What I'm Reading: Christopher Hibbert's The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici, the Folio Society edition — history written like a story, and I read it in Lake Como, in the country they helped build. From the show: what they did with all that money, Greek philosophy and the love of civilization, the door that took 20 years, the Medici library, the translators and copies that grew the West, and why bloodline succession never holds.

Read the guide — which edition to get and where to start · Get the book