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Summary: If you think business isn't interesting, read this
Review: This was truly a life-changing book for me when I read it 25-30 years ago. Up til then I had thought of myself as a kind of Bohemian, more interested in the arts and "higher things" than anything like business. At the time I was a penniless freelance writer, working in a library job that bored me. I was attracted to the book by the Renaissance Italy theme, but what I found was quite a revelation. The Medici engaged in some of the same sorts of sophisticated financial transactions that people use today -- including currency arbitrage and venture capital. But since the objects of the transactions were very concrete, physical things (coins, precious stones, etc.), it's easy to get a good understanding of what they were doing. That's how I got interested in business, and ultimately into a career as a corporate lawyer and venture capitalist. I also learned that many of the familiar masterpieces of Renaissance painting in museums around the world had been commissioned by branch managers of the Medici Bank. When the Medici found out that one of their managers had commissioned a painting, they figured his head had gotten too big, and they fired him. Very entertaining history!
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