LEADER 02627ojm  2200277z- 450 
001 9910149748403321
005 20230913112557.0
010   $a1-933311-88-6
035   $a(CKB)3710000000935132
035   $a(BIP)052600903
035   $a(EXLCZ)993710000000935132
100   $a20231107c2014uuuu  -u-            -
101 0 $aeng
200 10$aBorgias, The : Celebrated Crimes, Book 1
210   $cFreshwater Seas
330 8 $aTo paraphrase the note from the translator, The Celebrated Crimes of Alexandre Dumas pe?re was not written for children. The novelist has spared no language - has minced no words - to describe violent scenes of violent times. In this, the first of the series, Dumas tells the luridly sexy, amazingly violent, and strikingly amoral story of the three most famous members of the Borgia family - Pope Alexander VI, Lucrezia, and above all Cesare. Never one to allow a mere fact to stand in the way of a good story, Dumas puts all the most sensational accusations made against the Borgias - mostly by their enemies - to the fullest use, which certainly distorts history, but makes for a great tale. Also, he often takes the novelist's approach, giving us details of scenes for which there is no historical record - we are given, for example, a wonderful description of the look on Cesare Borgia's face as he breaks out of his Spanish prison, something not even Cesare himself could have seen, and he was alone at the time. Again, as the translator notes, "The careful, mature reader, for whom the books are intended, will recognize, and allow for, this fact." We're reading Dumas here, not Tuchman or Toynbee. Dumas gives us a sweeping tale of simony, betrayal, connivance, conquest both military and sexual, and above all death - on the battlefield in war, on the streets in brutal murder, in the dark by strangulation, at the table by poison. It is a tale of events and personalities that shook Europe and created the modern myth of the Renaissance prince, so well described by Machiavelli. Enjoy! Note: The modern listener will hear that certain passages in the book are marked by unmistakable anti-Semitism. As it is both useless to deny, and worthwhile to remember, that anti-Semitism was a cultural norm in Dumas' times, those passages have been left as written.
517   $aBorgias, The 
610   $aHistory
610   $aFiction
610   $aLiterature And Fiction
700   $aDumas$b Alexandre.$f1802-1870$0176848
702   $aBethune$b Robert$f1954-$4nrt
906   $aAUDIO
912   $a9910149748403321
996   $aBorgias, The : Celebrated Crimes, Book 1$93595046
997   $aUNINA