Tilt: A Skewed History of the Tower of Pisa

by Nicholas Shrady

Book Overview

In the tradition of Brunelleschi's Dome, comes a lively and richly informative chronicle of one of the world's most famous--and famously flawed--architectural and cultural icons, all presented in an innovative and striking format. (Architecture)

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0743229266
• ISBN13: 9780743229265
• Release Date: October 2003
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 161 Pages
• Weight: 1.03 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.1" x 10.4"

Customer Reviews

An Interesting Read

Tilt is a nice, enjoyable, and interesting read. It is a quick, little book (I finished it in a sitting), but quite engaging. If you are in search of a scholarly tome on the subject or even an exhaustive history of the Tower this might be a bit light for you, but if you are looking for a fun read on an interesting subject then I would recommend it.

History with a Tilted Gimmick

If it weren't for its famous tilt, the Leaning Tower of Pisa would be a mere pretty and ancient bell tower. As it is, the tilt has made it one of the most famous buildings in the world, and a target for millions of tourists through the centuries. The tilt has made the building, and has almost destroyed it. In _Tilt: A Skewed History of the Tower of Pisa_ (Simon and Schuster), Nicholas Shrady has sorted some tall tales from the facts of the building, and given a bright, short history of Pisa and its fortunes. It doesn't answer the question of why we should all be fascinated by this faulty building project, but it gives us information to increase our delight.The tower was begin in 1173 as a matter of civic pride in a city whose seagoing fortunes were brimming, and construction had not proceeded very far before it began to lean. There are plenty of legends about why it leans, but it is a simple fact that the tower rises above a former bog, whose subsoil, made of deposits of sand and clay silts, is unstable. A commission was formed in 1298 to determine what to do about the tower's tilt; at that time it was off center by only one degree. The tower leaned more and more, and there were fifteen more commissions over the centuries to halt the problem, with no success. A commission after the fall of the San Marco campanile in Venice fell in 1902 found that the tower was leaning more than ever, but no one had a scientific, geological, or architectural solution. It was only in 2000 when the most recent commission completed its work that there was any real success. An English soil expert lead a team to remove sixty tons of dirt from one side of the tower, which obligingly shifted in that direction, back towards perpendicular. Of course no one for centuries has planned to make the tower upright, but now tourists can reenter it for the disorienting climb up the crazy spiral staircase. The tower is stable, for now._Tilt_ is published with a pleasant gimmick. It does not really need a gimmick, for Shrady's history of the building and the puzzlement it has caused the world is enormous fun to read. The book, however, has been published at a slant, with each of the pages a decidedly non-orthogonal parallelogram. If you put this book on a shelf with others, the spine will tilt into the shelf. It's fun to see a book that isn't rectangular, and a bit disorienting to hold the book or read it in bed, with the point of the spine sticking downwards into one's chest. We take perpendicularity for granted in such matters, and the odd shape of the book reminds us that there is a eccentric charm in a book, or a tower, that doesn't stand up straight.

A nice and highly informative history of the Leaning Tower

This delightful book is a history of Pisa, and its most celebrated landmark, the Leaning Tower. (Did you ever notice that if you say "the Leaning Tower", everyone will automatically know what you're talking about?) Starting with the Pisan raid on Saracen Palermo, and the rich booty used to found the duomo, the author traces the rise and fall of the Pisan republic, and the rise of the campanile (bell tower) and the efforts to keep *it* from falling.Overall, I found this to be a very nice and highly informative history of the Leaning Tower. I was afraid that the odd rhomboid shape of this book would make it difficult to read, but it actually worked quite well! I highly enjoyed this book, and highly recommend it to everyone!

A Charming History of the Leaning Tower

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.)

Sweet!

This is the coolest looking book I've ever seen. The Tower of Pisa is one of the most recognizable structures on earth, but I had no idea what its history was but for the fact that it had managed not to fall over. Shrady is an assured writer who brings a depth of research and a lite hand to this gem of a book. The best gift book on earth, bar none.