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Tilt
In Tilt, author Nicholas Shrady reveals how the campanile, or bell tower, in Pisa's Campo dei Miracoli became the iconic Tower of Pisa. Even standing straight and true, the tower's marble & lime facade would be instantly recognizable the world over. Yet its distinctive tilt, which measured 1.6 degrees from vertical when construction was completed in 1370, has long been a mystery. Was it the result of shoddy workmanship or the brainchild of a hunchback maestro who skewed the tower to avenge his own condition? Nearly a millennium since its construction, the tower still stands (more than 4 meters--5 degrees--askew) in defiance of logic, gravity & soaring odds--a mute witness to history as it has unfolded. Envisioned as a display of wealth & power in Pisa's medieval heyday, the tower was revolutionary in its design. Architectural sleight of hand lent the campanile the appearance of weightlessness even as it supported seven colossal bronze bells. Technical achievements & rare beauty aside, it's the tower's glaring folly that has attracted legions of admirers & would-be saviors--even as it alarmed engineers. In addition to having defied the known laws of physics, the tower's cylindrical masonry has concealed a storied past. Galileo was said to have launched his experiments on the velocity of falling bodies from atop its heights. Lord Byron, the Shelleys & their Romantics frolicked in its listing shadow. Benito Mussolini tried to right the tower by ordering that cement be injected into its foundation. During WWII, the "Tiltin' Hilton" was a suspected enemy hideout & narrowly escaped being bombed. Following a $30 million stabilization & restoration effort lasting more than a decade & into the 21st century, Pisa's Leaning Tower has been preserved for the ages as an architectural marvel & paragon of modern tourism. Tilt encapsulates the tower's singular history in a hugely entertaining & informative narrative, by turns learned & whimsical, reverent & surprising. Here's a "biography" that, like its subject, is all the more delightful for its thoro improbability. It's a celebration of inspired vision & human machinations, of supreme ambition & spiritual enlightenment, of science & superstition, of faith & miracles.
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2003
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 48 reviews
August 23, 2007
This book is unbalanced. It's short, but the author spends more time explaining why he thinks Galileo did not drop things from the tower than he does explaining how engineers stopped it from falling over.
July 19, 2014
I have a strange relationship with the Tower of Pisa. I'm a massive history buff, and last year I finally had the opportunity to visit Europe and places like Pisa.
While looking up at the architectural wonder of the tower, I wasn't looking where I was going - fell down a step awkwardly and wound up flat on my back under the tower - and the rest of my time in Italy involved a lot of pain, doctors and the fine print of my travel insurance, not to mention terrible jokes the following weeks when I had to explain the reason I had a walking stick was because I fell over under the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
Now recovered (but with an ankle that expands of its own accord), the tower left a permanent reminder on my body, and continues to remain in my vivid imagination.
So I wanted to know more about the tower, somehow able to stay upright, when I so obviously couldn't and when there are other such leaning buildings in Europe (such as houses in Amsterdam) that have been in a state that leaves the observer holding their breath for longer than most buildings in my own country have even been standing.
I was intrigued by the blurb that promised to go through the cultural significance of this icon of human folly and defiance against the laws even of gravity itself - coming so perilously close to destruction for centuries.
I agree with other reviewers that the book is uneven. Much of it is dedicated to the history of Pisa - a place I have to admit I knew little about other than the presence of the tower - and the architectural history of the building. That's fine - but what drew me to the book was stories of how it has come to hold its cultural meaning in modern times, which really only had a few chapters towards the end. Shrady only just mentioned the hoards of tourists posing to make it look like they are "holding up" the tower (let alone the idiots who make it look like the tower is emerging from their trousers) and the Romantic "Pisan" circle of Shelley and Byron.
I feel this book either needed to be briefer in the historical part or a longer book - what interested Shrady in the tower? How do locals today negotiate their feelings about trying to live in a modern world funded and defined by the tower? Should we work harder to understand Italy in better detail than just "Tower & David & Colosseum" or has the Berlusconi legacy and austerity measures made cultural capital all the more important?
What I would love to see is a revised second edition. It would be interesting to see if any further movement has happened since the 2001 interventions and there have continued to be cultural changes to the tower since.
I don't know whether this has happened since the book's publication in 2003, but one cannot get to the tower without getting through a swarming area of stalls selling tacky tourist goods - and these stalls are run by migrants (from Africa and Eastern European countries). Given the history of Pisa, the opening up of Italy in the post-Euro era has seen a new breed of "merchant" to this once-great merchant city - bringing new cultural ideas to a landmark that itself was the result of an amalgamation of non-local philosophies and architectural concepts.
Despite being built so many centuries ago, this monument might remain stubbornly fixed in its position, but the cultural groundwork around it continues to shift and settle, and this is really what I want to explore further.
Oh, and watch out for crazy paving.
While looking up at the architectural wonder of the tower, I wasn't looking where I was going - fell down a step awkwardly and wound up flat on my back under the tower - and the rest of my time in Italy involved a lot of pain, doctors and the fine print of my travel insurance, not to mention terrible jokes the following weeks when I had to explain the reason I had a walking stick was because I fell over under the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
Now recovered (but with an ankle that expands of its own accord), the tower left a permanent reminder on my body, and continues to remain in my vivid imagination.
So I wanted to know more about the tower, somehow able to stay upright, when I so obviously couldn't and when there are other such leaning buildings in Europe (such as houses in Amsterdam) that have been in a state that leaves the observer holding their breath for longer than most buildings in my own country have even been standing.
I was intrigued by the blurb that promised to go through the cultural significance of this icon of human folly and defiance against the laws even of gravity itself - coming so perilously close to destruction for centuries.
I agree with other reviewers that the book is uneven. Much of it is dedicated to the history of Pisa - a place I have to admit I knew little about other than the presence of the tower - and the architectural history of the building. That's fine - but what drew me to the book was stories of how it has come to hold its cultural meaning in modern times, which really only had a few chapters towards the end. Shrady only just mentioned the hoards of tourists posing to make it look like they are "holding up" the tower (let alone the idiots who make it look like the tower is emerging from their trousers) and the Romantic "Pisan" circle of Shelley and Byron.
I feel this book either needed to be briefer in the historical part or a longer book - what interested Shrady in the tower? How do locals today negotiate their feelings about trying to live in a modern world funded and defined by the tower? Should we work harder to understand Italy in better detail than just "Tower & David & Colosseum" or has the Berlusconi legacy and austerity measures made cultural capital all the more important?
What I would love to see is a revised second edition. It would be interesting to see if any further movement has happened since the 2001 interventions and there have continued to be cultural changes to the tower since.
I don't know whether this has happened since the book's publication in 2003, but one cannot get to the tower without getting through a swarming area of stalls selling tacky tourist goods - and these stalls are run by migrants (from Africa and Eastern European countries). Given the history of Pisa, the opening up of Italy in the post-Euro era has seen a new breed of "merchant" to this once-great merchant city - bringing new cultural ideas to a landmark that itself was the result of an amalgamation of non-local philosophies and architectural concepts.
Despite being built so many centuries ago, this monument might remain stubbornly fixed in its position, but the cultural groundwork around it continues to shift and settle, and this is really what I want to explore further.
Oh, and watch out for crazy paving.
July 31, 2012
This is a quick and entertaining look into the storied past of one of Italy's most recognizable landmarks, the Tower of Pisa.
I was entranced by the account of Pisa's seafaring past and the origins of this remarkable landmark. Despite the short length of this book, Shrady still manages to tell a tale worthy of this amazing piece of architecture. In my humble opinion, the Tower of Pisa would be a breath-taking architectural wonder with or without its signature tilt.
I thoroughly enjoyed how Shrady dissected the myth of Galileo's experiments atop the Tower of Pisa. I had always suspected that James Reston Jr. added a little too much fictional flair to his history writing. Shrady confirms it here when he thoroughly rips apart Reston's reconstruction of the event that never happened.
This is a great little book to read, and it will likely pique your interest in reading further into Pisan history (I know it did for me).
I was entranced by the account of Pisa's seafaring past and the origins of this remarkable landmark. Despite the short length of this book, Shrady still manages to tell a tale worthy of this amazing piece of architecture. In my humble opinion, the Tower of Pisa would be a breath-taking architectural wonder with or without its signature tilt.
I thoroughly enjoyed how Shrady dissected the myth of Galileo's experiments atop the Tower of Pisa. I had always suspected that James Reston Jr. added a little too much fictional flair to his history writing. Shrady confirms it here when he thoroughly rips apart Reston's reconstruction of the event that never happened.
This is a great little book to read, and it will likely pique your interest in reading further into Pisan history (I know it did for me).
August 15, 2007
This is good book. Although it is relatively short, it contains most of the essential highlights of the Leaning Tower's peculiar history, including pertinent historical information on Pisa, Italy and other Mediterranean cities/countries. Various attempts at straightening the tower, or, at least, stop it from leaning further, are well presented, including the most recent efforts in this millennium. The book is well-written and is difficult to put down. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in a short, easy, yet authoritative history of the life and times of the famous Leaning Tower. (By the way, the book's interesting shape was not a factor in my buying it; although it does make it easy to find on a bookshelf.)
July 19, 2019
More of a solid, condense history of Pisa than of the tower itself...not only does the building compete with the history of the city, but a large tangent on Galileo. Unremarkable, but informative. However, the entire book is slanted...and while it's a cute idea, I couldn't stand it.
January 9, 2023
Generally believed to have been begun in 1173 to a design by the sculptor Bonanno Pisano, the campanile of Pisa cathedral is a perfect cylinder of marble, every individual stone cut to the curve. It rises through successive tiers of arcades that wrap the structure in a curtain of circular loggias; these create an architectonic space two layers deep, the loggias throwing their shadows on the inner core. Set against the wall of the neighbouring cloistered cemetery (the Camposanto) with its important frescos by Benozzo Gozzoli and other Renaissance painters, the bell-tower forms part of a group of buildings, with the earlier cathedral and baptistery, set out on a perfectly flat lawn. The gaps between these buildings, set on the greensward, are filled with spatial tension, and afford glimpses and perspective views from one to the other, in one of the most subtle urban ensembles anywhere in Christendom.
Begun using the spoils carried back by the once-great maritime Republic of Pisa after it had liberated Palermo from Arab dominion, the architecture of Piazza dei Miracoli incorporates powerful Islamic influences, inherited from the "Saracens" (Arabs) who previously occupied all of Sicily, many parts of the western Italian coast, the whole of Iberia, and much of what is now southern France. The exact mathematics required to build the tower are, as Nicholas Shrady acknowledges in this book, probably inherited from Islam and indeed, there are grounds for supposing that the very concept of the Christian bell-tower may derive from the Islamic minaret. To his credit, Shrady reflects the most up-to-date thinking about these issues, acknowledging the grounding in Islam of early southern European civilisation, particularly in architecture, overcoming the still-common assumption that the so-called "Saracens" were savages, bent on pillage and destruction.
Shrady is not a trained academic, and his racy, highly embellished writing reflects this. Stuffed with grammatical infelicities and strange half-Americanised spellings (“story” for “storey”), and useless adjectival expressions (the cathedral’s architectonic presence is described as “positively massive” - a characterisation that appears to have no meaning at all), his account adopts the “gripping tale” style: a curious amalgam of gushing glossy magazine copy and sincere thoughtfulness, peppered with uncalled-for personal opinions and unsustainable aesthetic evaluations.
He may, for instance, find the curious XV century cupola added to the baptistery “hideous”, but that is a personal judgment of a type that needs to be introduced with caution, and only with supporting argument. And whilst it is clear he has read widely - he copiously regurgitates from a wide range of secondary sources - none of these are acknowledged; there is neither a bibliography nor an index. Here’s a typical statement: “Its rare degree of stylistic uniformity suggests that Buscheto designed the entire [cathedral] of a piece, with the exception of the dome, an unfortunate fourteenth-century addition which displays a marked influence of the domed churches of Byzantium and the mosques of Sicily”. Why is that unfortunate? Is stylistic purity better than stylistic heterogeneity? These are the kind of important questions Shrady raises right though the book, but he never bothers to look into their implications.
Swept along by this careless, undisciplined thinking, he goes at a cracking pace and in an hour or two we get through the whole story of the leaning tower of Pisa, and all of its vicissitudes, right down to the recent stabilising interventions by Prof. John Burland and others, which seem to have saved it for another few hundred years. But such purple and alliterative prose as “a timeless temple that has lost none of its awe-inspiring power” generates an overwhelming sense of ennui that sets in about halfway through, making one wonder whether one really needs to finish the book at all.
In view of the recent work of Professor Burland and his Italian colleagues, and the new thinking that is beginning to more attentively investigate the Islamic influences in Western architecture, we might indeed hope at this point for a major new book on Pisa and its tower; but this isn’t it.
Begun using the spoils carried back by the once-great maritime Republic of Pisa after it had liberated Palermo from Arab dominion, the architecture of Piazza dei Miracoli incorporates powerful Islamic influences, inherited from the "Saracens" (Arabs) who previously occupied all of Sicily, many parts of the western Italian coast, the whole of Iberia, and much of what is now southern France. The exact mathematics required to build the tower are, as Nicholas Shrady acknowledges in this book, probably inherited from Islam and indeed, there are grounds for supposing that the very concept of the Christian bell-tower may derive from the Islamic minaret. To his credit, Shrady reflects the most up-to-date thinking about these issues, acknowledging the grounding in Islam of early southern European civilisation, particularly in architecture, overcoming the still-common assumption that the so-called "Saracens" were savages, bent on pillage and destruction.
Shrady is not a trained academic, and his racy, highly embellished writing reflects this. Stuffed with grammatical infelicities and strange half-Americanised spellings (“story” for “storey”), and useless adjectival expressions (the cathedral’s architectonic presence is described as “positively massive” - a characterisation that appears to have no meaning at all), his account adopts the “gripping tale” style: a curious amalgam of gushing glossy magazine copy and sincere thoughtfulness, peppered with uncalled-for personal opinions and unsustainable aesthetic evaluations.
He may, for instance, find the curious XV century cupola added to the baptistery “hideous”, but that is a personal judgment of a type that needs to be introduced with caution, and only with supporting argument. And whilst it is clear he has read widely - he copiously regurgitates from a wide range of secondary sources - none of these are acknowledged; there is neither a bibliography nor an index. Here’s a typical statement: “Its rare degree of stylistic uniformity suggests that Buscheto designed the entire [cathedral] of a piece, with the exception of the dome, an unfortunate fourteenth-century addition which displays a marked influence of the domed churches of Byzantium and the mosques of Sicily”. Why is that unfortunate? Is stylistic purity better than stylistic heterogeneity? These are the kind of important questions Shrady raises right though the book, but he never bothers to look into their implications.
Swept along by this careless, undisciplined thinking, he goes at a cracking pace and in an hour or two we get through the whole story of the leaning tower of Pisa, and all of its vicissitudes, right down to the recent stabilising interventions by Prof. John Burland and others, which seem to have saved it for another few hundred years. But such purple and alliterative prose as “a timeless temple that has lost none of its awe-inspiring power” generates an overwhelming sense of ennui that sets in about halfway through, making one wonder whether one really needs to finish the book at all.
In view of the recent work of Professor Burland and his Italian colleagues, and the new thinking that is beginning to more attentively investigate the Islamic influences in Western architecture, we might indeed hope at this point for a major new book on Pisa and its tower; but this isn’t it.
January 4, 2019
Interesting book - it tilts just like the Tower! The rhomboid shape of the book is a definite novelty for your bookshelf, but a bit (actually more than a bit) irritating and distracting to read. But it's not lengthy so actually no problem. And I'm delighted to have it on my shelves. Chronologies of its extended construction, then travails and near disasters as various folks try to keep it from leaning too far while maintaining enough tilt to keep the tourists coming. All with associated Papal and municipal happenings and some interesting associated history as well. A fun and interesting read for me, since I have visited and been impressed by the Campo dei Miracoli - Baptistery was most impressive, then the Camposanto Monumentale, then the Duomo, and finally that leaning Campanile.
July 9, 2021
A well written short story of the history and eventual salvation of the Tower of Pisa.
One reviewer was overly critical of the appearance of Galileo as taking up too much space. On the contrary, the chapter on Galileo and the myth of his time in Pisa was a brief 20 pages out of 161. I guess we just have a different view of excessive.
I would have rated it 5 stars if it had gone into more detail, especially about how the tower was saved from itself.
One reviewer was overly critical of the appearance of Galileo as taking up too much space. On the contrary, the chapter on Galileo and the myth of his time in Pisa was a brief 20 pages out of 161. I guess we just have a different view of excessive.
I would have rated it 5 stars if it had gone into more detail, especially about how the tower was saved from itself.
July 31, 2023
I found this book unsettling and disturbing because of its physical appearance - it is printed with spine and pages tilted - and a couple of librarians at the Providence Athenaeum, where I found this, agreed (not least because of the difficulty of shelving such a physically unusual book). Nevertheless, it is was a very enjoyable book, striking an excellent balance between being scholarly and readable. It presents a really enjoyable account of the history of the famous tower . . .
September 27, 2018
Truth be told, I only read about half of this book before returning it to the library. Parts of it were very interesting, while others seemed to drag along. I'm not sure if my travels will ever get me overseas to actually see the Tower of Pisa, but if they do I might have another go at this book to learn the rest of its history.
February 6, 2024
There were parts of this book that were really interesting and others that seemed like wading through a bog.
I would have like more information and time spent on the final committee and how they came up with the solution, and not, what I felt like was, a cursory brush by of the solution after hundreds and hundreds of years of problems and red tape in saving this grand structure.
I would have like more information and time spent on the final committee and how they came up with the solution, and not, what I felt like was, a cursory brush by of the solution after hundreds and hundreds of years of problems and red tape in saving this grand structure.
February 23, 2025
Well written and fairly easy to read. I love that the book itself actually “tilts.” Any fans of architecture will enjoy. I didn’t know much about the tower itself before reading and I learned a lot not only about architecture but history as well. Would recommend.
August 29, 2018
Too flowery and goes on too many tangents. The writing at times does not make some important facts clear. And a map of Italy would have been nice. Still nice to read about the Pisan campanile.
November 18, 2021
I collaborated in the “construction” of this book
January 29, 2022
Delightful and compelling look at the tower & the 800 years of history around it. Highly recommend!
August 30, 2023
Interesting book on the history of Pisa and the tower, but I wish there had been more about the science of stabilizing it.
February 18, 2024
Learned why it tilts and what's been done about it.
March 21, 2024
It's a high-level summary of this history of the leaning tower of Pisa. It's a good summary, but if you want a more detailed history you'll need to find other books.
May 2, 2025
i think the author is in love with galileo
November 29, 2012
Among Americans, anyway, the bell tower in Pisa competes with the Eiffel tower as the most visually recognized European edifice. Other buildings are given more cultural significance—the Vatican, Colosseum, Versailles, Westminster Abbey—but everyone can instantly recognize the “leaning tower of Pisa.”
Nicholas Shrady has done us all a nice favor by assembling a breezy little history of the tower. He explores the tower’s mysteries, some explained (Why does the tower tilt?), others not (Who designed it in the first place?). He tries to debunk some myths, especially the one that has Galileo famously dropping balls from the tower’s top level. He gives a little political history of Pisa, helping us to understand the significance a bell tower had among Italian city-states. There’s some architectual analysis, describing, for instance, the differences between the Pisan designs and their contemporaries in Chartres. All those threads are woven together by the tower and apparently successful efforts of the 1990 commission assigned to save the tower from crashing down.
Shrady even takes a stab at explaining why we are facinated with the tower. It’s not the largest bell tower. Pisa, without it, is hardly a stirring tourist attraction. He argues that it’s the tower’s very improbability that draws us: “The image of his tilting, defiant campanile [bell tower] symbolizes all that is wondrous and strange in a wolrd that is fast losing good measures of both.”
Nicholas Shrady has done us all a nice favor by assembling a breezy little history of the tower. He explores the tower’s mysteries, some explained (Why does the tower tilt?), others not (Who designed it in the first place?). He tries to debunk some myths, especially the one that has Galileo famously dropping balls from the tower’s top level. He gives a little political history of Pisa, helping us to understand the significance a bell tower had among Italian city-states. There’s some architectual analysis, describing, for instance, the differences between the Pisan designs and their contemporaries in Chartres. All those threads are woven together by the tower and apparently successful efforts of the 1990 commission assigned to save the tower from crashing down.
Shrady even takes a stab at explaining why we are facinated with the tower. It’s not the largest bell tower. Pisa, without it, is hardly a stirring tourist attraction. He argues that it’s the tower’s very improbability that draws us: “The image of his tilting, defiant campanile [bell tower] symbolizes all that is wondrous and strange in a wolrd that is fast losing good measures of both.”
February 17, 2019
This wasn’t really a history of the Tower of Pisa. Not a good one anyway. It was more architectural review interspersed with odd, misplaced anecdotes than it was a comprehensive look at Pisa or the Tower. You won’t learn anything about Pisa that you didn’t already know, and you definitely won’t learn anything about the Tower at all, including things you already know.
Overall, a quick easy read that you won’t hate yourself for picking up, but will largely prove to be a waste of time.
Overall, a quick easy read that you won’t hate yourself for picking up, but will largely prove to be a waste of time.
August 28, 2019
Tilt busts a few of those and probably prolongs a few more. Shrady provides a pleasant read of the kind you like to have to hand driving in or out of the holiday town du jour. Meandering from this pretty view to that interesting story and on to that amusing anecdote with a paperified tour guide.
Tilt nicely weaves the history of the iconic tower with that of the city and some of its famous inhabitants. It stages Pisa's sudden rise to greatness as a maritime republic, and its equally dramatic fall. The revolutionary architecture of the cathedral, baptistry and bell tower built upon its riches. The slowly increasing gradient and the attempts to arrest it (16 commissions over 8 centuries couldn't do it and the last had to fail before it succeeded). How Galileo didn't do his experiments in gravity from the tower. Even Mussolini gets a concrete cameo.
Tilt nicely weaves the history of the iconic tower with that of the city and some of its famous inhabitants. It stages Pisa's sudden rise to greatness as a maritime republic, and its equally dramatic fall. The revolutionary architecture of the cathedral, baptistry and bell tower built upon its riches. The slowly increasing gradient and the attempts to arrest it (16 commissions over 8 centuries couldn't do it and the last had to fail before it succeeded). How Galileo didn't do his experiments in gravity from the tower. Even Mussolini gets a concrete cameo.
December 7, 2012
A lot. Like how Pisa got its "money" to build the cathedral and the leaning tower. And that the tower is leaning at 5.5 degrees. And the encompassing yet fascinating history behind the tower and the place itself, Pisa. Before I was excessively preoccupied with Florence, then Venice, then Florence again. I never gave a thought about Pisa or ever heard the name Buscheto but now I know. The book is really good in that covers everything from the background of Pisa, the wars, and the attempts made to save the famous tower leaning precariously to destruction. So far, the book is entertaining and informative, nothing to lambast here but then I've always been a push-over for anything historical so I'm probably just being biased.
December 16, 2008
Found this at the annual Fort Mason book sale for $1. A really fun, fast read. Made me realize that I know very little about the history of Italy. Some surprises:
- In 846 A.D. the Muslims sacked Rome
- We know a lot about architects from the 1100's onwards
- That whole story about Galileo and the Leaning Tower of Pisa? Totally made up.
The book skimmed over the commission that finally figured out how to deal with the lean. I would have liked to read more than five pages about it. My other complaint is that, for the number of pages spent describing architecture and drawings, this book has very few pictures.
- In 846 A.D. the Muslims sacked Rome
- We know a lot about architects from the 1100's onwards
- That whole story about Galileo and the Leaning Tower of Pisa? Totally made up.
The book skimmed over the commission that finally figured out how to deal with the lean. I would have liked to read more than five pages about it. My other complaint is that, for the number of pages spent describing architecture and drawings, this book has very few pictures.
November 25, 2013
This was very well written and well researched. Shrady covers quite a bit - including the never-dying myth of Galileo dropping various objects off the tower to prove that weight disparity (unless causing enough disparity to involve air resistance - like a feather) makes no difference in the time objects hit the ground. Since I first encountered the leaning tower in my childcraft as a kid, I have been fascinated with it. Now that I've read this book, it is even more impressive. I learned lots of fun things, and Shrady shares it in such a way that it doesn't read like a textbook. There are a few illustrations included, and they are brilliant. I just really enjoyed this one!
September 9, 2014
Just a few weeks ago I was browsing the history section of the library, looking for something about Russia, when I saw this book sitting at a strange angle. I tried to straighten it out, but it wouldn't sit properly. Once I pulled it out I couldn't help but let out a stifled chuckle. A literally tilted book about the leaning tower of Pisa? It was too much! It turned out to be a really fun read to boot and I would recommend it to just about anyone.
July 21, 2013
I needed a fast read to recover from all the required reading at school and this was a perfect fit. However I felt there was too much time spent on the history prior to 1200 and not nearly enough after that, making the booked skewed if you will. It was great to debunk the myth of Galileo and very interesting to read about how this tower has leaned its way through 800 years despite all these measures to correct it or destroy it, especially when other towers have collapsed under less conditions.
May 23, 2015
A small but jammed packed book about the history of Pisa of which I was ignorant and all the events and people that were involved with the Leaning Tower. It also debunks a huge myth about Pisa-born Galileo...! This book is the kind of book that you can read intermittently with another on your nightstand.
January 10, 2013
Tilt is the story of the tower's singular history in a hugely entertaining and informative narrative. Here is a "biography" that, like its subject, is all the more delightful for its thorough improbability.
An enjoyable and informative read!
An enjoyable and informative read!
May 13, 2016
It started off interesting, then got super full real fast. It was too many facts and not enough narrative to enjoy the leaning tower. The author was a bit pretentious in his description. I have other books to read, so I'm not gonna force myself to finish this blah book.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 48 reviews