Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Adventurer: The Life and Times of Giacomo Casanova

Adventurer: The Life and Times of Giacomo Casanova

Damrosch, Leo

Paperback

Historical FiguresGeneral World HistoryItalian History

Publisher Price: $23.00

ISBN10: 0300271026
ISBN13: 9780300271027
Publisher: Yale Univ Pr
Published: Aug 29 2023
Pages: 432
Weight: 1.45
Height: 1.30 Width: 5.90 Depth: 8.90
Language: English
A fast-paced narrative about the world-famous libertine Giacomo Casanova, from celebrated biographer Leo Damrosch

Fully succeeds in communicating that 'vivid presentness, ' that 'joyful eagerness' for life, which is what keeps us reading Casanova--and reading about him.--Gregory Dowling, Wall Street Journal

A nuanced, deftly contextualized biography of an adventurer, an opportunist, and a man of voracious appetites. . . . Another top-notch work from Damrosch.--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

The life of the iconic libertine Giacomo Casanova (1725-1798) has never been told in the depth it deserves. An alluring representative of the Enlightenment's shadowy underside, Casanova was an aspiring priest, an army officer, a fortune teller, a con man, a magus, a violinist, a mathematician, a Masonic master, an entrepreneur, a diplomat, a gambler, a spy--and the first to tell his own story. In his vivid autobiography Histoire de Ma Vie, he recorded at least a hundred and twenty love affairs, as well as dramatic sagas of duels, swindles, arrests, and escapes. He knew kings and an empress, Catherine the Great, and most of the famous writers of the time, including Voltaire and Benjamin Franklin.

Drawing on seldom used materials, including the original French and Italian primary sources, and probing deeply into the psychology, self-conceptions, and self-deceptions of one of the world's most famous con men and seducers, Leo Damrosch offers a gripping, mature, and devastating account of an Enlightenment man, freed from the bounds of moral convictions.

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