I bought Najemy's History of Florence as preparation for reading Dante. The time period is perfect. Interesting times. Other comments led me to believe this would be an excellent up-to-date history of the period, and the first few chapters confirm that; however, Najemy is not a good writer. As an academic accustomed to captive audiences, he doesn't take enough care to understand what a reader needs to know and doesn't always define terms before he uses them. Some passages should be footnotes, and may have been copied from journal articles where readers can be expected to know the background.



There are examples where sentences are unacceptably ambiguous: p. 40: "Both forms of association appeared in Florence no later than the early thirteenth century..."

He means "first appeared ... no later."



His discussion on p. 39 of classes mentions Ottokar's system from 1926 and Salvemini's from 1899. In this paragraph Najemy engages in an academic argument suitable for a journal paper, but doesn't prepare the reader first by stating his own classification clearly enough. Nonspecialists would prefer to hear only Najemy's own explanation of class structure, presented clearly. The academic haggling should be relegated to footnotes for specialists.



For those who want a wonderfully well-written introduction to the essential history, I highly recommend Richard W. Church's essay from 1850, "Dante." It was a pleasure to read this essay, which doesn't sound dated. It can be found on the internet. This was mentioned in the preface to John Sinclair's Inferno, with the original Italian and a literal translation.

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