<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: ABSORBING!
Review: Acclaimed journalist Andrée Brooks has painstakingly delved into the deepest recesses of European history to produce a compelling account of the life of Doña Gracia Nasi, an extraordinary and powerful businesswoman of the Renaissance. I was utterly swept away by the story of this courageous humanitarian who managed to rescue thousands of her people from the terror of the Inquisition. Fascinating reading for the layperson, this definitive work of scholarship is enhanced by more than sixty pages of notes and an extensive and carefully prepared index. Brooks' engaging prose makes the sixteenth century come alive as few other books do. This dramatic page-turner should be made into a movie!
Rating:
Summary: ABSORBING!
Review: Acclaimed journalist Andrée Brooks has painstakingly delved into the deepest recesses of European history to produce a compelling account of the life of Doña Gracia Nasi, an extraordinary and powerful businesswoman of the Renaissance. I was utterly swept away by the story of this courageous humanitarian who managed to rescue thousands of her people from the terror of the Inquisition. Fascinating reading for the layperson, this definitive work of scholarship is enhanced by more than sixty pages of notes and an extensive and carefully prepared index. Brooks' engaging prose makes the sixteenth century come alive as few other books do. This dramatic page-turner should be made into a movie!
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting subject but poorly executed
Review: The subject of this book is a reasonably interesting person, even though the book is not that well done. Garcia Nasi (aka Beatrice de Luna) was a woman of a well to do Jewish merchant family who married into one of the great banking families of her era, the mid 16th century (born 1510 -- died 1569). Her husband, Francisco Mendes, and brother in law, Diogo Mendes, were very successful bankers. Garcia Nasi was an asset to her family business and after her husband and later her brother in law died, she took on greater and greater responsibilities in running the business. She was also a generous patron to fellow Jews and conversos in a time of inquisition and repeated expulsion. Her ability to stand up to powerful authorities in matters of commerce, and in her own legal struggles is laudable. Her travels through the great commercial centers of the age give a good picture of the activities of members of her class of society. The virtue of this book is that it is thoroughly footnoted and has an extensive bibliography. Therefore, if you have further interest in this lady, you have a list to take to the library. One problem I have with this work is the same one I have with any historian with an obvious mission. For example, a Marxist historian sees everything in terms of economics and class warfare. The author of this work is a Jewish historian and sees everything in terms of Jewish history. While Jewish bankers and merchants were a great factor in the commercial changes that paid for the Renaissance, not all bankers and merchants of the time were Jews or conversos. You would not know that if this work were your only source of information. The other points that remove my faith in the extent of the author's background knowledge of the period are three glaring mistakes.
1)She drags out that ancient canard that pepper was widely used in the cooking of the time to cover up the taste of rotten meat. Bushwa.
2)She says that serfs were used for military levees. I'm not sure whether she doesn't realize that there is a difference between serfs and peasants or that she doesn't realize that military skills were the last thing a landowner would encourage his low level tenants to acquire. But, it is a jarring note.
3)She says that the Portuguese invented Marine Insurance in the 15th century. I've been working in the Marine Insurance business for longer than I care to admit and I know that the Phoenicians invented Marine Insurance in classical times. If you have an interest in commercial arrangements, litigation, the situation of Jews and conversos in Portugal, Antwerp, Italy and Turkey, or in Garcia Nasi, then you should read this book. If you want an entertaining read from an author who knows her history (rather than one who falls down when she strays too far from her footnotes) find something else.
Rating:
Summary: A new look at doña Gracia
Review: This lively, meticulously-documented biography is bound to become the touchstone of Gracia Nasi scholarship for years to come. Using hundreds of documents not available to Cecil Roth-whose biography of Doña Gracia has been our main source until now-Brooks has finally set the record straight about the life of this heroic Jewish Renaissance woman. Brooks' lively prose and knack for dramatic detail should insure the book a wide popular readership as well. In what other single source can you find information about the medicinal uses of pepper, the intricacies of sixteenth-century silver speculation, or what it was like to be a wealthy passenger on a Mediterranean galley? Brooks weaves hundreds of seemingly unconnected strands into a compelling tapestry of Doña Gracia and her times. I was particularly taken by Brooks' evocation of Jewish and converso life in the succession of Renaissance centers-Lisbon, Antwerp, Rome, Ferrara, Venice, Istanbul, and Tiberias-in which the action unfolds. That alone would justify my assigning this book to my students. So too would Brooks' treatment of the complex "underground railroad" by which Doña Gracia and her family helped thousands of conversos to escape the dangers of life under the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions. Brooks' work also makes a significant contribution to our understanding of sixteenth-century economic practices in Europe: the movement of goods, the intricacies of commercial contracts, the development of letters of credit and exchange, the birth of the maritime insurance industry, money lending, and tax farming.
Rating:
Summary: Next: The Movie?
Review: This story of a Renaissance heroine reads like a novel: A brave young Jewish widow takes over her husband's international banking business, lends money to kings and dukes, exacts the freedom to flee from one country to another to escape the Inquisition, and rescues thousands of Jews. Yet the story is true, based on documents discovered by Andree Brooks in Spain, Portugal, Belgium, France, Italy, Jerusalem and Istanbul. Her research is tucked seamlessly into a racing narrative that takes the reader into the life and turmoil of the 1500's. It's the stuff movies are made of--we hope.
<< 1 >>
| 
