The Borgias and Their Enemies: 1431-1519

In contrast to the dicey cover, Hibbert's book is a straight forward, fairly well documented narrative of Rodrigo Borgia's eleven year reign as Pope Alexander VI and his use of the papacy to elevate his children Cesare and Lucrezia into the aristocracy. It provides a good overview but is lacking in analysis. While Alexander and Cesare's greed and corruption are amply documented the author does not examine the impact of his papacy on the church or the people it served.

Handling & Tema : 3/5
Karaktärerna: 3/5
Miljöbeskrivning: 2/5
Språk och berättarkonst 2/5

Svag 3/5 i helhetsbetyg : Denna bok är främst en historie bok än historieroman och med detmenar jag att visa historiska böcker kan kännas som en roman fast allt i dessa böcker är korrekt men författaren lyckas berätta historien på ett sådant spännande att man fastnar som i vilken roman som helst. Lärorik och spännande.
Tyvärr hade denna bok för lite spänning på grund av författaren sätt att skriva för själva historien var hur spännande som helt om den hade skrivits på rätt sätt . Svårt att hålla reda på alla namn och personer, synd att man inte dick lära känna personerna mer.

I really wanted to like this. It sounds like just my thing. A history story with lots of scandal but at page 150 0r so, I still just wasn't feeling it. I put it aside, maybe for now, maybe forever. It was not engaging me. :(

On another note, Catholics, dang! What happened? This pope was like...I don't know...Hugh Hefner maybe? Jeez. The Church sure has changed since these days.

This was really a fantastic book, and I really enjoyed it.
Compared with some of the other histories I have read, this one had a nice personable tone, and injected excerpts from relevant correspondence and works of the era to really give you not just dull facts, but the actual feelings and impressions that the contemporaries had.

The subtitle for this title is "A tale of greed, nepotism, assassination and relentless jostling for power", which describes the nature of the book perfectly. I bought this book (plus 3 other fiction titles on the Borgias) after watching and enjoying the TV series titled "The Borgias" last year. This is non-fiction so therefore the author has no obligation to make us like the people featured in it, just to give the facts. The Borgias were extremely corrupt, violent and generally represent the least Christian values - yet they are running around at the head of the church! The most interesting person in the book for me was Lucrezia, who had a relatively small role.

I wouldn't say I particularly enjoyed the book, but it was informative. I show more am going to give it 2 stars. show less

Great subject matter handled a little too matter-of-factly.

Full of colorful characters, fascinating intrigue and skull-duggery, and the selection of events and pacing are both fine. I just felt, as a popular history, this could have been more lively and interesting; perhaps more interpretation or specualtion on the Borgia figures would have brought them them more to life.

I read Hibbert's book on the Medici family. This was equally informative and fascinating. What a wild and strange period this was in Europe. In some ways, it was very gracious and refined, but in so many other ways it was violent, nasty, depraved and cruel. It was certainly never short on drama.