The bestselling biographer profiles the illegitimate daughter of Pope Alexander VI, who married three times (the first at the age of 13), was accused of incest, became the Duchess of Ferrara, and, as legend would have it (incorrectly, Bradford explains), was complicit in the assassination of her second husband.
Critic Reviews
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Outstanding
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Booklist Margaret Flanagan
Since no portrait of Lucrezia Borgia as a true Renaissance woman would be complete without a trace of scandal, this compelling biography is irresistibly interwoven with plenty of period gossip, sex, and intrigue. [15 Oct. 2004, p. 383]
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Outstanding
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The Spectator Anne Somerset
Sarah Bradford writes with cool authority and her research in Italian archives is exemplary. No other biography is likely to bring us closer to Lucrezia, even if some aspects of her personality remain indistinct. [9 Oct. 2004, p. 42]
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Favorable
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USA Today Dierdre Donahue
Although Bradford brings to life the delights and pleasures of the Italian Renaissance, she does not veer from the ugly truths about the plight of women.
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Favorable
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Wall Street Journal David A. Price
Ms. Bradford's eye for telling detail opens a window on the private life of this strange family.
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Favorable
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Kirkus Reviews
A thoroughly researched, gracefully written revision of the most beguiling Borgia.
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Favorable
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Publishers Weekly
As a project designed to distinguish the historical Lucrezia Borgia from the legend, Bradford's readable biography resoundingly succeeds.
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Favorable
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San Francisco Chronicle Andrea Hoag
This new approach toward the life of a misunderstood woman proves that even long-despised historical figures can be rendered heroines in the end.
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Favorable
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The Independent Clare Colvin
Bradford, returning to the Borgias after biographical forays into the dynasties of the Windsors and Kennedys, makes it clear that Lucrezia, while aware of her father and brother's infamy, was brought up in a world where male dominance was taken for granted.
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Favorable
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The New Republic Ingrid D. Rowland
Bradford's effort to focus on Lucrezia's genteel diplomacy marks a significant departure from Machiavelli's cynical take on many of the same events, and makes it all the more distressing that a woman of this intelligence and spirit should have been relegated by her family and her society to so circumscribed a life.
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Favorable
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Atlantic Monthly Karyn L. Barr
Sarah Bradford paints the duchess in Lucrezia Borgia as a fiercely passionate, astute woman with a talent for using her independence, reputation, and sexual prowess to help mend politically fractured Renaissance Italy. Too often, though, the dense, detailed-laden biography buckles under its own weight.
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Mixed
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The Guardian Kathryn Hughes
Whether the end result - the conclusion that Lucrezia was quite nice really - is sufficiently new or startling to justify keeping faith with nearly 400 dense pages of plotting is unclear. The problem does not lie in Bradford's treatment or research, which is immaculate, but is part of the larger problem of how to deal with biographical subjects who lived at a time when to be a sentient human being meant something very different from what it does today.
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Mixed
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Washington Post James Reston Jr.
One is left with the impression of a writer rummaging through medieval archives, but then neglecting to do the careful sifting and discarding that Virginia Woolf would have admired.
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