Written by a former director of the National Gallery in London, this might be expected to centre on the Renaissance which was Florence's special glory. And, of course, that golden age figures prominently, but earlier and later centuries get their due too - Florence, after all, was the city of Dante and Giotto and of merchant princes and bankers. Neither did it ever go into the total eclipse, historically and artistically, that some historians have alleged: Florentine "decadence" in fact comprised periods of great vitality. Much of the city today is a 19th-century growth around the old medieval town, and Florence played its part in the new, united Italy; it also attracted artists and writers from many lands, including Henry James. A handsome and outsize paperback, well illustrated.