书名：The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici美第奇家族的兴衰
作者：Christopher Hibbert
出版社名称：Penguin
出版时间：2001
语种：英文
ISBN：9780140050905
商品尺寸：14 x 2.4 x 19.7 cm
包装：平装
页数：368
文艺复兴时期的佛罗伦萨在其鼎盛阶段曾是欧洲财富、权力和影响力的中心。作为一个靠贸易和金融支撑的共和制邦国，她不乏血腥争斗的政治统治权掌握在富有的商人家族手中，而这其中著名的莫过于美第奇家族。本书The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici《美第奇家族的兴衰》所讲述的就是美第奇家族的兴衰史，具有很强的可读性。

媒体评论：
精彩至极、可读性强……浪漫唯美又不乏戏剧性和血腥杀戮。
——萨谢弗雷尔·斯特维尔爵士（Sir Sacheverell Sitwell）
克里斯托弗·希伯特先生是一位相当多才多艺的作家。
——雷蒙德·莫蒂默（Raymond Mortimer）

（克里斯托弗·希伯特）不愧为大师，他的这部作品研究深入，可读性强。
——《每日电讯报》

At its height Renaissance Florence was a centre of enormous wealth, power and influence. A republican city-state funded by trade and banking, its often bloody political scene was dominated by rich mercantile families, the most famous of which were the Medici. This enthralling book charts the family's huge influence on the political, economic and cultural history of Florence. Beginning in the early 1430s with the rise of the dynasty under the near-legendary Cosimo de Medici, it moves through their golden era as patrons of some of the most remarkable artists and architects of the Renaissance, to the era of the Medici Popes and Grand Dukes, Florence's slide into decay and bankruptcy, and the end, in 1737, of the Medici line.
这本令人激动的作品细数了美第奇家族在佛罗伦萨政治、经济和文化历史上的巨大影响。本书内容始于15世纪30年代，美第奇王朝在近乎传奇的科西莫·德·美第奇的领导下崛起，中间经历了他们作为文艺复兴时期一些伟大的艺术家和建筑师的资助者的黄金时代，再到美第奇家族的各位教皇和大公统治的时代，直至佛罗伦萨陷入衰败与破产以及1737年美第奇家族血脉的终结。
克里斯托弗·希伯特于1924年出生于英国莱斯特郡，英国皇家文学院成员、莱斯特大学文学荣誉博士，毕业于牛津大学拉德利和奥里尔学院。二战期间他入伍成为一名步兵，曾两次负伤，并于1945年获得军功十字勋章。《新政治家》称其为“传记作者中的明珠”，《泰晤士报》则形容他“可能是世上具天赋的通俗历史学家”。克里斯托弗·希伯特著有许多广受赞誉的作品，包括《拉格伦王的灭亡》（荣获1962年海涅曼文学奖）、《伦敦城市史》、《法国大革命》、《罗马城市史》、《佛罗伦萨城市史》等。有两个儿子和一个女儿，现居于泰晤士河畔亨利小镇。

Christopher Hibbert was born in 1924 and educated at Radley and Oriel College, Oxford. He served as an infantry officer during the war and was awarded the Military Cross in 1945. His many highly acclaimed books include the following titles: The Destruction of Lord Raglan (which won the Heinemann Award for Literature in 1962), London: The Biography of a City, The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici, The Great Mutiny: India 1857, The French Revolution, Garibaldi and His Enemies, Rome: The Biography of a City, Elizabeth I: A Personal History of the Virgin Queen, Nelson: A Personal History, George III: A Personal History and The Marlboroughs: John and Sarah Churchill 1650 - 1744. Christopher Hibbert is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an Hon. D. Litt. of Leicester University. He is married with two sons and a daughter, and lives in Henley-on-Thames.
One September morning in 1433, a thin man with a hooked nose and sallow skin could have been seen walking towards the steps of the Palazzo della Signoria in Florence. His name was Cosimo de’ Medici: and he was said to be one of the richest men in the world. As he entered the palace gate an official came up to him and asked him to wait in the courtyard: he would be taken up to the Council Chamber as soon as the meeting being held there was over. A few minutes later the captain of the guard told him to follow him up the stairs; but, instead of being shown into the Council Chamber, Cosimo de’ Medici was escorted up into the bell-tower and pushed into a cramped cell known as the Alberghettino — the Little Inn — the door of which was shut and locked behind him. Through the narrow slit of its single window, so he later recorded, he looked down upon the city.
It was a city of squares and towers, of busy, narrow, twisting streets, of fortress-like palaces with massive stone walls and overhanging balconies, of old churches whose façades were covered with geometrical patterns in black and white and green and pink, of abbeys and convents, nunneries, hospitals and crowded tenements, all enclosed by a high brick and stone crenellated wall beyond which the countryside stretched to the green surrounding hills. Inside that long wall there were well over 50,000 inhabitants, less than there were in Paris, Naples, Venice and Milan, but more than in most other European cities, including London — though it was impossible to be sure of the exact number, births being recorded by the haphazard method of dropping beans into a box, a black bean for a boy, a white one for a girl.
For administrative purposes the city was divided into four quartieri and each quartiere was in turn divided into four wards which were named after heraldic emblems. Every quartiere had its own peculiar character, distinguished by the trades that were carried on there and by the palaces of the rich families whose children, servants, retainers and guards could be seen talking and playing round the loggie, the colonnaded open-air meeting grounds where business was also discussed.