Christopher Hibbert - The House of Medici - Its Rise and Fall

At its height, Renaissance Florence was a center of enormous wealth,  power, and influence. A republican city-state funded by trade and  banking, its often bloody political scene was dominated by rich  mercantile families, the most famous of which were the Medici. This  enthralling book charts the family's huge influence on the political,  economic, and cultural history of Florence. Beginning in the early 1430s  with the rise of the dynasty under the near-legendary Cosimo de Medici,  it moves through their golden era as patrons of some of the most  remarkable artists and architects of the Renaissance, to the era of the  Medici Popes and Grand Dukes, Florence's slide into decay and  bankruptcy, and the end, in 1737, of the Medici line.