Inventing the World: Venice and the Transformation of Western Civilization

by Meredith Small

An epic cultural journey that reveals how Venetian ingenuity and inventions—from sunglasses and forks to bonds and currency—shaped modernity.

How did a small, isolated city—with a population that never exceeded 100,000, even in its heyday—come to transform western civilization? Acclaimed anthropologist Meredith Small, the author of the groundbreaking Our Babies, Ourselves examines the the unique Venetian social structure that was key to their explosion of creativity and invention that ranged from the material to social.

Whether it was boats or money, medicine or face cream, opera, semicolons, tiramisu or child-labor laws, these all originated in Venice and have shaped contemporary notions of institutions and conventions ever since. The foundation of how we now think about community, health care, money, consumerism, and globalization all sprung forth from the Laguna Veneta.

But Venice is far from a historic relic or a life-sized museum. It is a living city that still embraces its innovative roots. As climate change effects sea-level rises, Venice is on the front lines of preserving its legacy and cultural history to inspire a new generation of innovators.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

336 pages, Hardcover

Published December 1, 2020

About the author

Meredith F. Small is a science journalist, anthropologist, professor emerita Cornell University, and a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania. Although well known for her award winning magazine writing, she is also the author of several trade books that take an anthropological look at parenting, sexuality, and mental illness. Her book Our Babies, Ourselves has been called a "cult classic" for parents, health professionals, and anyone interested in parenting styles. Meredith's latest book is"Inventing the World; Venice and the Transformation of Western Culture" ( Pegasus Books) is about a list of over 200 inventions and creative ideas that originated in Venice and how they affected our modern view.

Reviews

[Ron · Rating 3 out of 5]

‘Many of these Venetian firsts were still with us, part of the fundamentals of Western culture, how we think and how we operate.’

Disappointing. Want to like this book because I agree with its premise. Too much padding, too many opinions disguised as fact, awkward presentation.

‘Today we anthropologists call that cultural indoctrination a belief system.’

Belongs on the same shelf as How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe  and How the Scots Invented the Modern World. Simply reading Wikipedia supports Small’s major argument. Much of the rest is hyperbole and fluff; entertaining but didactic.

‘According to Marx, capitalism contains within it the “seeds of its own destruction” as the rich overreach, consolidate their power and grip, and choke off their own economic growth. Venice was, in fact, a prime example of Marx’s philosophy.’

Cynical, socialist take on capitalism, innovation, and property rights. Skip the first chapter; you’ll read her opinions on creativity and humanism many more times. Uses statistics to inflate, not to inform.

‘Today there are 6.5 million people in Italy.’ (more like 65 million), ‘As imaginary, as we do today as we do with online transfers.’ (huh?), ‘This book is not just for Venetofiles.’ (ph, not f), ‘they perfected the thermometer” (invented), ‘When John Quincy Adams … as he helped give birth to the United States.” (John, not John Quincy, his son), ‘The city of Trieste, north of Venice’ (east), ‘Some doctors proscribed electrotherapy’ (proscribed?).

Needs another proof reading. Many errors of history, geography, and grammar. Reads as if translated from a foreign language. Awkward verb choices knock the reader out of the narrative trying to decipher the meaning. Many foreign phrases not translated.

‘And we, now Homo consumerensis, have to decide if we are thankful for that example or furious about it and need to stop buying all this stuff to save ourselves and the planet.’

[Cameron Chandler · Rating 3 out of 5]

WHEN YOUR EDITORS AND PUBLISHER SELL YOU DOWN THE CANAL...

The author is a nice person, has lots of friends, and wrote a pretty interesting book.

(and maybe that's all you need to know, because the rest is a rant...)

She also wrote three pages of acknowledgments about how many people helped her, encouraged her, edited her, and hooked her up with a literary agent and a successful proposal, picked up by a name publisher.

But NOBODY could be bothered to proofread this book???? WTF.

All the more surprising because the author is Professor Emerita, Cornell, and tells you so in her bio.
And, she publishes a book heavily cross-indexed with footnotes, a bibliography and index reminiscent of a peer-reviewed professional journal. But no journal would accept this work in the condition that Pegasus published it and in which Simon & Schuster distributed it.

The text is riddled with typos. Some of them like, "United State of America" would have been funny if someone like David Sedaris wrote it with intended irony. Others, like a whole page of discussion of an Italian guy named "Soro" but half the time typeset as "Soros" are just plan sloppy.

Ironically, THIS book has an entire section on "Typography and Punctuation," in which Dr. Small allows as how, "The recent invention of computers and digitization makes this process even easier and faster, and potentially mistake-free because of cut, paste, and spellcheck."

And, evidently, that's how this book came to market riddled with typos and mistakes, possibly 'spell-checked' but never seen by a certified copyeditor, never beta-read, and apparently with galleys un-proofed...because hey, it's been spellchecked, what do you expect? But, I don't think Dr. Small would ever let one of her grad students get away with a spell-checked thesis submission. For example, a little Global Search on her own manuscript would trip over the word "ides." It brings up a typo where she is intending to say, 'tides of time' but ends up with 'ides of time' instead. Channeling David Sedaris again. And that's why any (real) editor will tell you, "proof-read, proof-read, proof-read every little thing." Spell-check is like basting a seam; it's not for a walk on the runway.

Dr. Small, I expect a lot more. From a published professor retired from a name-brand university. From a manuscript published by a recognizable international distributor. Maybe, neither you nor I should be surprised about the publisher...google Pegasus as I did...people often ask if Pegasus is a vanity press? ...in which case maybe your posse let you down by letting you go there. At $27.95 USD suggested retail, I could have hoped for some illustrations (another reviewer's point well taken, at this price point anyway.) I do know that I PAID for a clean text and didn't get it, not even close. I got a poorly edited book on pulp-cheap paper.

I'll leave you on a positive Note, Dr. Small. I hope you do well enough to get a second printing. And, if you do, insist that the text be edited (lightly) and proofed (heavily) because you deserve that and I think your readers do too. I think your book would have been worth 5 stars if it had been produced with better interiors; a more interesting typeface (since that would have been in sync with what you were writing about); a reasonable number of illustrations (it's all about the beauty and the originality, why not curate a little of that to show to your reader); and an appropriate choice of paper (to show off your clean, well-written text).

[Uriah O'Terry · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5
Born out of a deep personal affinity for the city of Venice, this book set out to explore the impact Venetians have had on the Western world. In her preface, Small writes how this book was born out of a list she began making of all the inventions born in Venice, and how she realized that such a list “could provide a framework for a very different way of looking at this city both historically and culturally.” (Small, preface) following that impulse, Small describes her book as “the tale of how one small place had an outsized influence on the development of Western culture.” And such it is, and this sort of teleological expectation of the contemporary Western world pervades her writing and analysis, for better or worse.
Small dedicates her first chapter to exploring the very basis of the human urge to invent and innovate. She discusses what she calls the “evolution of invention” (pg.3) and various prominent theories on how and why the human brain is particularly suited to thinking up new ways of doing things. She concludes with a meditation on why cities have historically been such hotbeds of invention.
Chapter two is titled “Venetians invented themselves,” and it starts the history of Venetian innovation with comments of their own self-identity. From the strange and bold idea to build an entire city atop a few floating islands in a lagoon to tales of St. Mark and the Trojans, Small is eager to establish the creation of Venice itself as her “first and perhaps most important invention.” (pg. 42)
Chapter three deals with the inventions that were birthed in the maritime history of Venice. From fine cartography and other navigational aids like the compass to a remarkable ship-building industry, Small demonstrates how Venetians laid the groundwork not only for the age of exploration but also for mechanized assembly lines in the factories of the Industrial Revolution and beyond.
Chapter four presents the social innovations of Venetian history. Small heralds the beginnings of class and gender mobility in Venetian society. Ideals of government accountability and workers' rights, in her telling, stem from the politics and confraternities of Venice. Much is also made of how the Venetian government, with its separate but overlapping offices and committees, inspired the founders of the American republic.
Chapter five busies itself with crediting the modern medical apparatus and lexicon to Venetian attempts to forestall the ravages of the plague and the diligence of scientists at the University of Padua. Small celebrates how “the freedom to think about, experiment with, and reframe everything that was known at the time about illness and health.” (pg. 97) Hand in hand with Santorio and Fallopio, Small dances on the graves of Hippocrates and Galen. Much of the origins of modern understandings of anatomy and health are credited to the diligence and freedom of Venetian and Paduan physicians.
Chapter six credits modern consumerism and our fascination with purchasable things to the mercantile efforts of Venice. Small locates the origins of many familiar industries on the islands and in the ships of Venice. From fine glass, silk, and lace work to cosmetics and art supplies Venice not only introduced Europe to the fine art of acquiring the unnecessary, she also cornered the market and did it better than anyone else for a long time. But it wasn’t only the commodities themselves, the fiscal architecture that was built around them was also an inventive feat that we still feel today. The Patents and tariffs that were born out of the Venetian instinct for self-preservation and fiscal dominance, have, according to Small, come to define the modern economic landscape.
Chapter seven expands on the economic innovation discussed in chapter six. Small urges that by inventing and perfecting things like double-entry bookkeeping, high quality coin minting, and notes of credit, Venice invented capitalism. She stresses Venice as the crossroads between east and west, and how instead of materials themselves, money, the middleman of exchange became the symbol and business of Venice. A decision that patterned the modern economic world.
Chapter eight finds, in Venice, the invention of everything from newspapers, paperback books, photojournalism, and the business of publication itself. Small writes how the unique society and fiscal position of Venice allowed her financiers and tradesmen to transform the West through the printing press.
Chapter nine closes Small’s study with an exploration of the various leisure activities that originated in Venice. From gambling and performance art to coffee shops, Venice oversaw the invention of many familiar pastimes we still enjoy today. Small humorously asserts: “Venetians didn’t invent fun, but they certainly know how to have it.” (pg. 210)
Small concludes her book with an afterward which is primarily an invective against climate change and tourism, the two grand enemies of modern Venice. She shows how Venice has approached these problems with the same characteristic historical impulses of republican freedom from and reliance on the apparatus of the state and the uncanny ability to make a buck off of seemingly anything. But she seems to think that these threats could genuinely be more than Venice can overcome.
Small begins each of her chapters, save the last two, with a story of the evolutionary advance of whichever human endeavor is under discussion. One becomes unsure whether the author is trying to write an anthropology or a history, or perhaps both simultaneously. Either way, her story of human ingenuity and endeavor culminates in every chapter with Venetians and their epic contributions to the various Western developments. She also sprinkles in so much of her personal, contemporary experience in the city of Venice, with the obvious intention of provoking kind affections in the reader. Not to think critically about how our world was built and where the systems and practices that hold it came from, but to be personally invested in the preservation of the city itself, today. While that is a fine thing to do, a book that purports to be a serious study of historical Venetian ingenuity is, perhaps, not really the place. The obvious bias of the author undermines her credibility and the reader develops a certain credulity toward Small’s repeated claims of Venetian supremacy.
While different standards must be expected for popular level books, this one fits better the genre of a blog series than a book. Small’s material would have benefitted a Substack account but as a book it is draining and quite underwhelming. This problem is magnified by the truly negligent work of the editors. Rudimentary grammar and spelling errors abound, while many sentences are clunky and unnecessarily long. It lacks a certain level of polish that one hopes to see in publicly published material. On the whole, it falls into the batch of academic literature that was produced during COVID lockdowns. A time when generally decent scholars and enthusiasts, with nothing better to do, cobbled together their various notes and obsessions into flavorless books.

[Scott K · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good book that should have been a great one

The subject is intriguing and most deserving of coverage, but this book needed more disciplined writing and more rigorous editing, both of content and of copy. Too many sloppy mistakes and inaccuracies mar the reading experience.

[Peter Lucke · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’d give it a 3.5 star review if I could. Very informative book, but the facts or opinions seemed to be just thrown out there without weaving a flowing story. Maybe my interpretation of the flow of the story was distracted by all the inventions?

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting but a bit of a mess

I’ve read a few books about Venice, and I’d definitely recommend a more traditional history than this one- and there are plenty that are very readable. This book just felt disjointed with bizarre overly long anthropological descriptions of terms like “community” which was hardly necessary for the rest of the chapter in Venice specifically. It was a framing method that just didn’t work. And then some chapters just seem to leap from topic to topic almost to get out “oh Venice also contributed to this thing and this other thing and oh yeah before I forget this thing.” You can get the same fun facts out of a more narrative history while also feeling a sense of story and continuity that this book severely lacks.

[Melinoë · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are too many typos.

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought the first chapter not necessary as if the author had to give the book an academic gloss when the book stands well on its own and anyone who has been to Venice or wants to go should read this book and take notes so that they do not miss anything when they go or if they have gone what they missed. I know now why Venice has the Venice Bienanale. So, I absolutely loved this book and I read it twice and the second time I took notes as the book a wealth of knowledge. The author learned how to navigate a gondola which was also great!