THE ITALIANS BEFORE ITALY Conflict and Competition in the Mediterranean

Professor Bartlett covers Italian history from the fall of Rome until the latter 1500s, but focuses on the Renaissance, when independent Italian city-states flourished. The history is generally accessible, and the lectures are eloquent and cogent, but at times, especially early on, listeners without prior knowledge may find themselves a little lost. While Bartlett has a strong, clear voice, and his pacing is good, he has a couple of distracting verbal tics: a periodic sigh, which occurs too frequently to mean anything (sometimes twice in a sentence), and the odd pronunciation of "peninshula" for "peninsula" (a word he uses often). Attention to these small but persistent problems would have made this informative and otherwise well-presented program more listenable. W.M. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine [Published: JULY 2008]