{"product_id":"antwerp-9780141982465","title":"Antwerp","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eThis rich history of Antwerp was a \u003ci\u003eTimes \u003c\/i\u003eBook of the Year and Radio 4 Book of the Week\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEven before Amsterdam there was a dazzling North Sea port at the hub of the known world: the city of Antwerp.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAntwerp was sensational like nineteenth-century Paris or twentieth-century New York, somewhere anything could happen or at least be believed: killer bankers, easy kisses, a market in secrets and every kind of heresy. For half the sixteenth century, it was the place for breaking rules - religious, sexual, intellectual.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn Antwerp, things changed. One man cornered all the money in the city and reinvented ideas of what money meant. Another gave Antwerp a new shape purely out of his own ambition. Jews fleeing the Portuguese Inquisition needed Antwerp for their escape, thanks to the remarkable woman at the head of the grandest banking family in Europe.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThomas More opened \u003ci\u003eUtopia\u003c\/i\u003e there, Erasmus puzzled over money and exchanges, William Tyndale shel\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAntwerp is the star of this charming and rather lovely history ... Pye writes beautifully, has a lovely eye for detail and an obvious affection for this period of Antwerp's history. \u003c\/b\u003e -- Peter Frankopan * The Observer *\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eIn the 16th century Antwerp was Europe's marketplace, a tolerant, secular city governed by money. It was a spectacular place, a rogue's paradise where everything seemed possible. The city's story is as convoluted as its streets. There is no single plot and there are no straight narrative lines. Michael Pye is the perfect chronicler of this extraordinary place, being a writer of deep complexity, immense imagination and opulent prose. His cornucopia of Antwerp's abundant delights is as voluptuous as the city itself. \u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e -- Gerard DeGroot * The Times Books of the Year *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ewondrous ... a book of imaginative historical reconstruction that reads as brilliantly as a novel by Hilary Mantel\u003c\/b\u003e -- Kathryn Hughes * Mail on Sunday *\u003cbr\u003ein his exhilarating new history of Renaissance Antwerp ... \u003cb\u003ePye captures Antwerp's greatest decades in character studies, stories and vignettes, encompassing not just trade but buildings and books too. It is pieced together with great skill and art, and the effect is dazzling. If you want a linear history of 16th century Antwerp, stay away. But if you want a sense of the city's anarchic splendour, its potent, unsustainable originality, then this is the book for you. \u003c\/b\u003ePye conjures up exactly the glamour that drew people to Antwerp's gates in its pomp: the city as idea; the city as improvisation; the city as possibility. -- Matthew Lyons * Literary Review *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eAntwerp\u003c\/i\u003e, Pye's galloping and flavoursome account of the city's heyday [is] a lustrous gem of a book\u003c\/b\u003e. \u003cb\u003eStudded with racy anecdotes but firmly embedded in archival research, \u003c\/b\u003eit shows why the city that nurtured \"a pragmatic kind of tolerance\" rose so fast - and why, almost as rapidly, it fell ... \u003cb\u003ePye unrolls a sparkling string of stories\u003c\/b\u003e rather than a heavy tapestry of contexts, hinterlands and aftermaths ... \u003cb\u003eIn this swarming fresco, which merits a place near Simon Schama's \u003ci\u003eThe Embarrassment of Riches \u003c\/i\u003eor Robert Hughes' homage to Barcelona, Pye not only rescues Antwerp's lost \"world of liberty\", he leads entranced readers through its grubby, glittering streets.\u003c\/b\u003e -- Boyd Tonkin * Financial Times *\u003cbr\u003eCapturing the essence of 16th-century Antwerp is difficult; its story is as convoluted as its streets. That story does not lend itself to linearity; there's no single plot, no straight narrative lines.\u003cb\u003e Michael Pye - journalist, broadcaster and prolific author - is the perfect chronicler of this extraordinary place, since he revels in complexity and never hesitates to use his abundant imagination. His prose is as opulent as the city itself. ... \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003ePye provides a cornucopia of Antwerp's abundant delights. \u003c\/b\u003e -- Gerard DeGroot * The Times *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePye offers a master class on how to tell the story of a city.  Fascinating and gloriously good fun. \u003c\/b\u003e -- Gerard DeGroot * Twitter *\u003cbr\u003eNow a museum-like gem, for much of the 16th century, Antwerp thrived as Europe's most vibrant center of commerce, intellectual life, and free thought. \u003cb\u003ePye offers a colorful depiction of the city's 'exceptional years.' Entertaining.\u003c\/b\u003e An impressionistic portrait of its institutions and great men (Bruegel, Erasmus, et al.), emphasizing the lives of now-obscure traders, bankers, entrepreneurs, officials, printers, and booksellers, including a surprising number of successful women and Jews. \u003cb\u003eA vivid look at a great Renaissance city.\u003c\/b\u003e -- Kirkus\u003cbr\u003eIn a highly readable new book, Michael Pye argues that, during Europe's ages of discovery, it became one of the earliest genuinely global cities too ... If we understood more about Antwerp, though, we might understand more about ourselves and our long umbilical links to Europe. * The Guardian *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eexuberant ... Pye creates a thematic mosaic, drawing on a mass of accounts and original sources, from wills and inventories to doodles and self-help books. The book is dense with stories ... [which] reflect Antwerp's volatile, opportunistic, profit-grabbing ethos, loose ends and all\u003c\/b\u003e ... Antwerp was, Pye claims, \"the emporium for ideas as well as goods.\" Its trade in knowledge and its deals in art, books, and luxury goods were renowned across Europe. -- Jenny Uglow * New York Review of Books *","brand":"Penguin Books Ltd","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49083367358807,"sku":"9780141982465","price":12.34,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9780141982465.jpg?v=1725548693","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/antwerp-9780141982465","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}