History is anything but dull here: this chapter of Italy's tumultuous past comes alive so vividly that this book is hard to put down. It may help that the characters were so colorful in real life and the situations so dramatic, but without the enthusiasm and storytelling skills of E. R. Chamberlin, this could have been a dry tome or, worse yet, just another melodramatic 'bodice-ripper'. Instead we are treated to a family saga of epic proportions which, because it is rooted so firmly in scholarship, is able to allow us a great view of real human beings in the act of making real world history.