Rating: 
Summary: Palm Beach Post Review
Review: Finally: A book you can just about judge by its cover. Nicholas Shrady has done an amusing and literally slantendicular history of one of Italy's most famous landmarks, the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
It's collectible for its design. Somebody at Simon & Schuster has come up with the delightful idea of shaping the book in a trapezoidal cover, so that it literally leans. You would need a wooden shim to make it stand upright on your bookshelf. The optical illusion carries over into the text: Even though the type is set quite upright, the odd butterfly design of the open pages makes the word-columns seem to lean, ever so slightly outward, on both sides.
Shrady dangles us over the tower's parapet, traces its history in lively fashion. The Leaning Tower is one of architecture's most appealing monuments. Its very imperfection endears it to us. It's like us: fallible, teetering forever over ruin. My old Greek professor, William Calder III, confided to me that on a 1962 visit he was seized with acrophobia at the top of the tower and had to be blindfolded and led down again.
Thanks to the soggy ground underlying Pisa's "Campo dei Miracoli," the Field of Miracles where the town's spiritual life was centered in the 12th century, the tower began to lean almost as soon as it was under construction. Begun in 1173, when Pisa was at the height of its power and prestige, the tower started tilting after only three stories were completed.
It is precisely this defect which makes the Leaning Tower so interesting. Just as 18th century ladies would sometimes paint a "beauty spot" on their cheeks to make their faces more alluring, the Leaning Tower owes its appeal to its curious deviation from true vertical. Were it perfectly upright, it would only be a pretty mass of columned marble. But its imperfection takes it into the world of whimsy.
It is made of 32,240 blocks of marble, 13 half-columns for the ground story, 180 more columns for the arcades, 12 for the belfry and 293 steps for the interior stairwell. It is, as Shrady notes neatly, "a column of columns," a very airy structure made of stone and shadow.
The author traces the tower's history very well and economically through most of the book. There are three very interesting short chapters, one on the fascination the tower exercised upon Mary Shelley, authoress of "Frankenstein," who mentions that when she visited it, people were not allowed to climb except in groups of three, because so many lovestruck couples were committing suicide by jumping off it. A third person was needed, as a kind of suicide-watchdog.
He also makes short work of the myth that Galileo demonstrated the law of gravity by dropping two metal balls of unequal weight off the tower. He didn't.
The modern history of the tower includes a World War II episode in which a humble U.S. Army sergeant was briefly entrusted with the fate of the tower. His decision not to call in an artillery strike on it saved the edifice.
But the book gives sinfully short shrift to the modern campaign to rescue the tower from ruin. We get a bit of it at the beginning, and an even shorter bit of it at the end, but this remarkable, thrilling episode is sadly scanted. PBS's "Nova" did an hourlong documentary on the rescue and it was absolutely fascinating. Shrady passes over it with a few penstrokes. The essentials are there, but one hungers for more details. For 11 years the tower was so dangerous it was closed to the public. Now, barring a really bad earthquake, we should possess the gloriously skewed monument for another 300 years at least.
Bibliophiles will want this book for its crazy design. Others, more sane, can read it for its interesting slant on an interesting monument. As a carpenter might say, it's about a bubble off-level. But so is its subject.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting Look, Interesting Read
Review: I bought this book more because I was intrigued by its form factor than by the subject matter. not that the Tower of Pisa isn't of interest to me as an architectural object.Nominally a history of the leaning Tower of Pisa, but more so a history of Pisa beginning before the tower was even contemplated and ending with its most recent intervention to prevent its collapse. Most towers, and many other structure built in Italy at that time leaned, and most of the leaning towers have subsequently fallen. Even some of the towers that did not develop a list have ultimately failed. So why does the tower at Pisa lean, and why doesn't it fall. Shrady looks at the construction practices of the time and how they contributed to the tilt. He points out the several lost opportunities to correct, or at least not exacerbate the problem during its century of construction. Then he discusses modern attempts to stabilize the structure, and their often near disastrous consequences.
Rating: 
Summary: History with a Tilted Gimmick
Review: If it weren't for its famous tilt, the Leaning Tower of Pisa would be a mere pretty and ancient bell tower. As it is, the tilt has made it one of the most famous buildings in the world, and a target for millions of tourists through the centuries. The tilt has made the building, and has almost destroyed it. In _Tilt: A Skewed History of the Tower of Pisa_ (Simon and Schuster), Nicholas Shrady has sorted some tall tales from the facts of the building, and given a bright, short history of Pisa and its fortunes. It doesn't answer the question of why we should all be fascinated by this faulty building project, but it gives us information to increase our delight. The tower was begin in 1173 as a matter of civic pride in a city whose seagoing fortunes were brimming, and construction had not proceeded very far before it began to lean. There are plenty of legends about why it leans, but it is a simple fact that the tower rises above a former bog, whose subsoil, made of deposits of sand and clay silts, is unstable. A commission was formed in 1298 to determine what to do about the tower's tilt; at that time it was off center by only one degree. The tower leaned more and more, and there were fifteen more commissions over the centuries to halt the problem, with no success. A commission after the fall of the San Marco campanile in Venice fell in 1902 found that the tower was leaning more than ever, but no one had a scientific, geological, or architectural solution. It was only in 2000 when the most recent commission completed its work that there was any real success. An English soil expert lead a team to remove sixty tons of dirt from one side of the tower, which obligingly shifted in that direction, back towards perpendicular. Of course no one for centuries has planned to make the tower upright, but now tourists can reenter it for the disorienting climb up the crazy spiral staircase. The tower is stable, for now. _Tilt_ is published with a pleasant gimmick. It does not really need a gimmick, for Shrady's history of the building and the puzzlement it has caused the world is enormous fun to read. The book, however, has been published at a slant, with each of the pages a decidedly non-orthogonal parallelogram. If you put this book on a shelf with others, the spine will tilt into the shelf. It's fun to see a book that isn't rectangular, and a bit disorienting to hold the book or read it in bed, with the point of the spine sticking downwards into one's chest. We take perpendicularity for granted in such matters, and the odd shape of the book reminds us that there is a eccentric charm in a book, or a tower, that doesn't stand up straight.
Rating:
Summary: History with a Tilted Gimmick
Review: If it weren't for its famous tilt, the Leaning Tower of Pisa would be a mere pretty and ancient bell tower. As it is, the tilt has made it one of the most famous buildings in the world, and a target for millions of tourists through the centuries. The tilt has made the building, and has almost destroyed it. In _Tilt: A Skewed History of the Tower of Pisa_ (Simon and Schuster), Nicholas Shrady has sorted some tall tales from the facts of the building, and given a bright, short history of Pisa and its fortunes. It doesn't answer the question of why we should all be fascinated by this faulty building project, but it gives us information to increase our delight. The tower was begin in 1173 as a matter of civic pride in a city whose seagoing fortunes were brimming, and construction had not proceeded very far before it began to lean. There are plenty of legends about why it leans, but it is a simple fact that the tower rises above a former bog, whose subsoil, made of deposits of sand and clay silts, is unstable. A commission was formed in 1298 to determine what to do about the tower's tilt; at that time it was off center by only one degree. The tower leaned more and more, and there were fifteen more commissions over the centuries to halt the problem, with no success. A commission after the fall of the San Marco campanile in Venice fell in 1902 found that the tower was leaning more than ever, but no one had a scientific, geological, or architectural solution. It was only in 2000 when the most recent commission completed its work that there was any real success. An English soil expert lead a team to remove sixty tons of dirt from one side of the tower, which obligingly shifted in that direction, back towards perpendicular. Of course no one for centuries has planned to make the tower upright, but now tourists can reenter it for the disorienting climb up the crazy spiral staircase. The tower is stable, for now. _Tilt_ is published with a pleasant gimmick. It does not really need a gimmick, for Shrady's history of the building and the puzzlement it has caused the world is enormous fun to read. The book, however, has been published at a slant, with each of the pages a decidedly non-orthogonal parallelogram. If you put this book on a shelf with others, the spine will tilt into the shelf. It's fun to see a book that isn't rectangular, and a bit disorienting to hold the book or read it in bed, with the point of the spine sticking downwards into one's chest. We take perpendicularity for granted in such matters, and the odd shape of the book reminds us that there is a eccentric charm in a book, or a tower, that doesn't stand up straight.
Rating:
Summary: A Skewed History
Review: Okay, I admit I was suckered in purely by the marketing strategy of this book--the constructing of the book itself at a tilt to highlight the fact that this is a book about the Leaning Tower of Pisa. I appreciate a well- and uniquely-constructed book. They are works of art themselves. However, it's all meaningless without the words inside. Fortunately, Shrady has written a volume worth reading. As a physics teacher, I often have cause to tell the story of Galileo and his motion experiments at the Leaning Tower. (Despite the fact that these experiments are likely the stuff of fiction and legend.) Shrady discusses these experiments in history of the tower. More interestingly, however, he describes the construction of the tower and the fact that it tilted almost from the start of its construction as did many contemporary structures. Medieval architecture just wasn't up to the task of predicting in advance what buildings were capable of being effectively constructed. He also discusses the many fascinating attempts to fix the tower which, more often than not, did nothing or made things worse. Finally, we get the story of the modern attempt in the 1990's to fix the tower which has been, as far as can be determined successful--in angle of tilt has been reduced and seems to be fixed in place. The tower is once again open to tourists after having been closed for nearly a decade. All in all it is a fascinating story. If there is a weakness in this book it is the fact that Shrady has fallen into a common trap: this story (as he told it) didn't quite come up long enough so there's a bit of repetition here to try to bulk things up. And it still ends up being a slim volume. Still, it's worth the couple hours time it take to read it.
Rating:
Summary: Very Enjoyable Slice Of Pisa
Review: One thing I need to mention right up front: if you are looking for a very detailed architectural/engineering sort of book (a la Ross King's "Brunelleschi's Dome" and "Michelangelo And The Pope's Ceiling), you are going to be disappointed with "Tilt." Mr. Shrady gives you the structural basics - why the Tower started to tilt, how a recent "team" was able to decrease some of the tilting in order to "shore up" the Tower, etc. - but the book is mostly a cultural history, with the Tower at the center of a spiderlike web of information. The author gives you some Pisan history - its rise as a maritime commercial power as it provided transportation and supplies during the various Crusades; its final decline after a crushing naval defeat at the hands of Genoa in 1284 (which resulted in the 13th century joke: "To see Pisa, you must now go to Genoa"); the humiliation of the entire city being sold to the Visconti of Milan in 1399 and (apparently speculation in real estate is not a modern concept) being sold again, this time to Florence, in 1405; etc. Mr. Shrady does explain that, due to interruptions, the Tower took about 200 years to complete; it's made of marble; and it's basically a "column made up of columns." The book is full of much interesting information. For example, during the "Romantic Age" the Tower became a popular place for self-destruction ( eventually the authorities came up with a regulation that no fewer than 3 people at a time could climb to the to top of the bell tower. This was meant to stop individual and "couple" suicides). We also learn that Mussolini was embarrassed by the "Faulty Tower." He felt it didn't represent the Italian people at their best (for that they needed to hark back to the days of the Roman Empire). Mussolini convened a commission to come up with a way of straightening out the Tower. The experts couldn't agree on what to do, so IL DUCE did what any hands-on, take-charge sort of dictator would - he made the call. One expert suggested piping 90 tons of liquid cement into the foundation. (This was something Mussolini could understand- putting some "backbone" into the thing!) Most of the experts said it wouldn't work, and they were right. The Tower, instead of just leaning one way, began to wobble around in a weird sort of dance (we're talking millimeters) and after many months it, luckily, pretty much wound up where it started (rather than collapsing). (In all fairness, there have been many commissions, and none of them could figure out what to do until the most recent one - which was the 17th! That one convened in 1990 and just got the Tower "up and running" again in 2001. Even they almost got laughed out of business in 1995 when the Tower almost collapsed while stabilizing cables were being installed.) Mr. Shrady is also very good at debunking some historical myths concerning the Tower. For example, despite the story being passed down from historian to historian, Galileo never climbed the Tower and dropped objects of differing weights off (to show that the objects would fall at the same rate). Another myth is that the Tower leans due to sloppy construction. Not so, according to Mr. Shrady. The workmanship was fine. The boggy, unstable soil under the foundation is the problem (and is a problem throughout Pisa, not just under the Tower). Even though I enjoyed the book, and was happy to follow the author as he meandered down some historical sideroads, I still would have liked it if he had seen his way to providing a little more technical information about the construction of the Tower (and perhaps an exploration of some theories concerning how the structure has defied gravity and avoided being "downsized" to street level). Still, reading this book was a lot of fun...literally. Its "Pisa-like" shape causes the pages to sort of resemble a "pinned butterfly" when you open the book. It took a few pages to get used to, but in the end I found the difference from reading a regular book to be an interesting one.
Rating:
Summary: Very Informative !
Review: Shrady's "Tilt" is a well written account about Pisa's war torn history and the famous Tower that would take hundreds of years to complete amidst turbulent times. Shrady does a good job dispelling the myths surrounding the Leaning Tower, the greatest being that the Tower was some great architectural error. No error at Pisa, just soggy ground! Also. Galileo has always been associated with the Tower of Pisa, but Shrady discusses how Galileo probably never climbed it. Unfortunately, Shrady tends to focus on the city of Pisa for the bulk of the book. Certainly, the history of the city is important and it does relate to the Tower, but one tends to assume that the book would discuss Leaning Tower more, and this is not the case. The ending is somewhat abrupt. I was hoping for detailed discussion on the renovation of 1999, and it seems as if Shrady could have expanded on it. (The book's cover is rather brilliant: The top and bottom are cut on angles so that when placed upright, it appears to "tilt"! Nice!)
Rating:
Summary: Fun, quick book on the famous tower
Review: This book isn't just about the tower itself; to set the scene, the author recounts, briefly, the history of the Mediterranean from Pisa's perspective. Pisa grew to be a prosperous and politically independant town in the middle ages, and to show off it did what most towns then (and some now) do to show off: it built grand buildings. It started with a massive cathedral and other projects. The tower was actually just the finishing touch of the grand cathedral; it was its bell tower.
But these huge buildings take time to build, and by the time the tower really got going, Pisa was in decline. It took great effort just to finish it, several centuries after its foundation was laid. And the tower's tilt was noted long before completion; upper floors were actually slanted with respect to the lower part of the tower to try to keep them level. The author recounts how the tower became both an embarrasement (as a defective building) and a part of legend (as the place where Galileo supposedly dropped different weights to disprove Aristotle). The author is quick but thorough as he recounts how the Galileo thing got started, and why it's likely fiction.
The author does not recount with engineering detail every nuance of its tilt, but he does cover why it started tilting, how it almost collapsed with the "help" of a 19th-century architect and, later, Mussolini, and how it almost got annihilated in the second world war. He talks a little more briefly than I would have liked about the successful 1990s effort to lessen the tilt. However, he does cover the politics of the situation well (people were alternately happy and angry with the commision that solved the problem). Overall, the book covers its subject well in a relatively brief book.
Rating: 
Summary: Limited
Review: This book was interesting but very limited in scope. I had expected the focus to be on the architectural and engineering aspects of the tower, but the book was more a history of Pisa. Having been to the tower in 2001 during the most recent attempts at stabilizing the strucutre it was disappointing that only one page of the entire volume was devoted to information on how this was accomplished. A bit more science would have greatly enhanced the value of the book. Also, the book design makes for uncomfortable reading and seems like a gatuitous gimmick.
Rating:
Summary: A nice and highly informative history of the Leaning Tower
Review: This delightful book is a history of Pisa, and its most celebrated landmark, the Leaning Tower. (Did you ever notice that if you say "the Leaning Tower", everyone will automatically know what you're talking about?) Starting with the Pisan raid on Saracen Palermo, and the rich booty used to found the duomo, the author traces the rise and fall of the Pisan republic, and the rise of the campanile (bell tower) and the efforts to keep *it* from falling. Overall, I found this to be a very nice and highly informative history of the Leaning Tower. I was afraid that the odd rhomboid shape of this book would make it difficult to read, but it actually worked quite well! I highly enjoyed this book, and highly recommend it to everyone!
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