Pistols! Treason! Murder! by Jonathan Walker
The year is 1622. Anxiety is high in the city of Venice. Rumors of treason flourish. The noble Antonio Foscarini stands accused and pays the ultimate price. Gerolamo Vano, General of Spies, provides the evidence. But who is really guilty? By the end of the year, Vano is swinging from the gallows in Piazza San Marco, while Foscarini is absolved posthumously. Pistols! Treason! Murder! uncovers the shadowy world of seventeenth-century espionage and the truth behind the most infamous miscarriage of justice in the history of Venice. Including vividly illustrated comic strips, accounts of the author's bar tour around contemporary Venice, and painstaking detective work, Jonathan Walker's story of the rise and fall of a master spy is compelling and highly original. In untangling the career of the master spy Vano, Walker invites the reader into the historian's task of piecing together evidence from incomplete archival sources, making sense of motives, coming to terms with the story, and knowing when the job is done. Aspiring historians will find the methods Walker used to uncover this fascinating story invaluable in their own historical quests.
A fascinating read for anyone interested in the seventeenth century, in Italy, or in the history of the spy business in general-- Loretta Carrico-Russell Internet Review of Books 2009 In this highly original study, Walker uses conventional narrative together with comic-book graphics, varied type-faces, interview transcripts and quotes from contemporary plays to explore the process of history writing. -- P.D. Smith Guardian 2009 This book will infuriate as many scholars as it excites, but it is original, well written, and good. It should intrigue anyone who likes reading history. Library Journal 2010 Walker's diagnosis of the Venetian underworld is canny and his trespasses across the boundaries between author and subject lighthearted and fun. -- Thomas V. Cohen Renaissance Quarterly Walker blazes an important new path, and for this historians of the early modern world are much in his debt. -- Elizabeth Horodowich Journal of Modern History 2010
Jonathan Walker is a senior research fellow in the Department of History at the University of Sydney. Together with Dan Hallett, he has recently finished an "illuminated novel," Five Wounds, which will be published in 2010. He is also working on a photographic essay on Venice entitled Let Us Burn the Gondolas: Venice as a Modern City.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780801893704 |
| ISBN 10 | 0801893704 |
| Title | Pistols! Treason! Murder! |
| Author | Jonathan Walker |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Johns Hopkins University Press |
| Year published | 2009-10-12 |
| Number of pages | 288 |
| Prizes | Short-listed for NSW Premier's History Award 2008 (United States) |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |