rcmnd

City of FortuneBook

by Roger Crowley

Who uses, recommends or left City of Fortune, in their own words: each a verbatim quote with a link to where it was said.

1 person

Writer and consultant; founded the blog Ribbonfarm and now writes the Contraptions newsletter on technology, history and organizations.
recommended

I read that last month, and visited Venice while I was reading it, and I was struck by the extent to which medieval Venice was a well-oiled political economy machine.

The post launching his monthly Contraptionist History book club; this passage is on the first pick, Roger Crowley's City of Fortune.

2025-01-03·contraptions.venkateshrao.com ↗

Every entry is a verbatim quote and a link to the public post it came from. Nothing is paraphrased. If it is not on record somewhere public, it is not here.

The verdict is what they actually said: loved and liked are explicit; recommended means they told others to get it; uses means they only say they use it; read is a book on their public shelf with no verdict; mixed and disliked are kept too.

A dashed affiliate link, sponsored or their own label means the post disclosed a relationship. It is shown, never hidden.

The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is for its kind of thing.

The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is, for its kind of thing. Fully green is recent. It drains a quarter at a time as the post gets older, and is empty once it reads as dated.

What counts as old depends on the thing. A laptop praised four years ago has been replaced twice; a book loved twenty years ago is probably still loved. The shading is gone after about:

Stripes mean the post carries no date and the date shown is an estimate. No date at all, no shading.