This is one of the essential books that bring a solid perspective on what is the reality of history, not what commentators or national prides would like it to be.. Braudel is one of the most gifted historians of this century, and few like him can go into the inner workings of the social and economical mechanisms that drive history, really. In this well written volume, excellently translated, one sees clearly where laid the "center" of the Western world in the XVI century: The Mediterranean. Assuredly, the gold of the Americas was coming in; and the North Sea and Baltic trades were going on briskly. Nevertheless, Venice still mattered. The Mediterranean links remained the prize for Spain, the Ottoman empire and whomever had access to the locked sea. Yet, the future was close and the through the XVI there were clear signs of the shifts in power to come. Mr. Braudel work is as comprehensive as it gets. This is a gigantic canvas of the Mediterranean of the time, from its geographical and climatic descriptions, to the way that the Ottoman Empire raised money for its needs. We do not have a single hero in this almost novelistic type of work, everybody gets its turn under the sun. The result is a deeper understanding of where we come from. Even if today you live in Fairbanks, Alaska, you will feel strangely linked to the Venetian Pepper trade of the times.....

In the 1500s, billions in gold and silver poured into Spanish coffers from the new world; yet, a century later Spain was bankrupt. What happened? Fernand Braudel has woven together a fascinating tour around the Mediterranean of the 1500s, explaining the rise of the Ottoman Empire, how Egyptians made iced drinks, why Algiers became the capital of piracy, how the banking system created the first transcontinental roads, and much more. This book immerses the reader in a new world full of rich details and suprising connections. Spain? An extravagant Star-Wars size naval fleet built with timbers imported from Scandinavia; nonexistent accounting practices, the personal greed of Spanish nobility helped along by canny bankers in the Netherlands--the wealth poured out as fast as it had come.