Pretentious and Incomprehensible
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This is one of the worst-written books I have ever read. The writing is pretentious and incomprehensible. The translator should have made more of an attempt to make it readable for other than academics, by using normal English rather than trying to show off her knowledge of obscure words. The writing makes it difficult to get to the underlying ideas.
Don't read it unless you have to (its a set book for OU course A840).
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Barely comprehensible
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This much admired door stop of a book is for architectural historians only - and only then if you really have to. Mr Tafuri was, no doubt, quite brilliant, but he rattles along using barely comprehensible language (god help the person who had to translate it from Italian) drawing all sorts of wild, and not so wild, conclusions. A worthy addition to art history, but not for the casual reader or visitor to Venice.
PS Hardly any pictures and those there are are black and white.
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For architects only .....
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This book examines a several themes about the influences over architectural developments in Venice in the 16th and 17th Centuries. Frankly it is not very accessible, it is a dense and convoluted text which makes some staggering leaps of logic. He writes from a Marxist perspective, but stylisticly it reads more like a linguistics book in places. Do not buy it if you have a general interest in Venice; rather buy one of Deborah Howard's books instead. If you are just visiting Venice Hugh Honour's Companion guide to Venice is great.
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