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pp. 160, “Best-selling novelist and essayist Gore Vidal presents his own personal view of Venice, ‘perhaps the most beautiful cliche on earth.’ Of Friuli blood himself, Vidal sets out to trace his Venetian ancestry as well as the origins of this uniqe city and its rise to fame as the head of a great seafaring empire – an empire that produced Bellini, Titian and Vivaldi as well as Marco Polo and Casanova. With his customary cynicism and biting wit, he finds parallels between Venetian history and that of our own times. One hundred sumptuous color photographs of the city – its palaces, its festivals, its people – bring to life this jeweled shell which still casts its ancient magic spell over visitors to this day. What better guide to have on this Venetian journey – from colonized mudflat to the most glorious tourist trap in the Adriatic – than the incomparably entertaining, perceptive and provocative Gore Vidal.”