This fascinating new book, Venice, Cita Excelentissima, contains a series of translated excerpts from the diaries of the Venetian patrician Marin Sanudo (1466-1536). Sanudo wrote his vast diaries between 1496 and 1533. As early as Sanudo's own lifetime, historians used the richness and variety of these diaries as an unparalleled evidentiary source for early modern Venice. The depth of the diaries derives from Sanudo's personal access to govern ment records and, perhaps even more, his attention to detail and the wide range of topics that he deemed worthy of record. The importance of the diaries prompted a group of Italian editors to publish them in their entirety between 1879 and 1903, a project that eventually spanned fifty-eight volumes. E