Michelangelo's Mountain: The Quest For Perfection in the Marble Quarries of

For context, I am a sculptor who works in marble and limestone, mainly abstract. I have spent time carving with teachers in California, Italy and my hometown, Atlanta. I am a patent lawyer by trade and enjoy geology, hiking among the stones, and reading about Konstantin Brancusi and Henry Moore among others.That said, this book is one of the best I have read on the subject of carving. I have read it multiple times and it is full of my underlining and annotations. The description of the people, culture and the quarries around Carrara makes you understand the place at a depth you will never get to by just being there for a while. The description of the stone, the tools and other mechanics of carving is some of the best I have ever read. I learned a great deal about how marble is structured and how it works from this book, subjects I thought I already knew well from years of carving. The book's treatment of Michelangelo, the politics, the person, the economic constraints he was under, is riveting. If you are not a sculptor, I believe the book would nevertheless be engaging at least for the way it illuminates Michelangelo and also life in Italy. Scigliano is an engaging writer and the book is a page-turner and fun and rewarding to read all the way through.I think so highly of the book that I have bought it and given it to other people, including one of my instructors who has been an artist for many years but for whatever reason had not read this book.

An early reference to marble work in Lee, Massachusetts caught my attention and drew me deep into this unique and fascinating account of the marble quarries that provided the raw material for the genius that we all now know as Michelangelo. I glimpsed the quarries from a train window on a trip to Italy a year ago, mistakening them for snow at first, and it's an amazing sight. I highly recommend this book - the stone that inspired the Rennaissance is still there and this story of the mountains of marble is told with a passion that reflects the emotion of those times. A great read.

This is not the sort of book I normally pick up, but I'm finding it to be a remarkable work, superbly written and illuminating. The author reveals great curiosity and range.

fascinating

Great history of the development of the Marble Industry in the region.

All of the people who think "Michelangelo" when they think of the Renaissance should read this work by a "Renaissance man" himself, Eric Scigliano, environmental journalist, humorist, art aficianado, and regular contributor to Harper's, Discover, and other magazines. I read his last book, "Love, War, and Circuses," which brought the world and land of the Asian elephant so alive I felt as if I were on his harrowing adventures with him, and have been seeking out his articles ever since. Both the layman and the expert alike will be fascinated by one of the few real prose stylists in journalism to write a part-biography, part-"reporter's notebook" account of Michelangelo, the city of Cararra (the third pole of Michelangelo's artistic endeavors, and no less important than Florence in the development of his masterpieces), and the rare, wondrous, "living" marble from that fascinating source of masterpieces the world over. Don't be distracted by the geological sidenotes or short discussions of the artists' tools; in Michelangelo's first appearance it is as if he walked up to a group of wiry, spry stone carvers and this journalist/artist/poetry translator, said hello, and joined them, as alive as ever, to admire the "mountain," a glistening white cliff of fossilized sea shells (you can't get much more alive, for stone, than being made out of the backs of ocean-dwellers, as marble is).A passionate writer on a passionate subject, Scigliano's love for the artist and his sunlit-snow-like inspiration is "alive" on every page (and I learned enough about the Renaissance to wax intelligent at parties on neoplatonism, Michelangelo's own poetry, and the Umberto-eco-like intrigues of the patronage system, just in the first 50 pages!). You will never look at the "David," or a marble bathroom counter, in quite the same way. Scigliano is a huge talent.

This book provides great insight into the life of this great one!This review is for Kindle users: Note it is not text to speech enabled, even though we have to pay a high price. When will publishers learn that there are many of us that are very busy and use our Kindles to read to us as we travel, including listening while we are driving? S&S should learn a lesson, especially since they charge a high price for a Kindle version without the feature enabled. Yet, I would rather have it on Kindle than not, but am not happy with their decision!!Let your views be known about this issue, pro or con!

Perfect condition, brand new.

Great book.perfect condition.

If your interests lie with both Michelangelo's work and about the marble he used, then this is the book for you.