I finished reading City of Fortune over the weekend. It's a history of Venice, an early example of a "virtual" city without natural resources other than a built in moat and pulling itself up with grit, gumption and a lot of warehouses. It kinda reminds me of Amazon to the Byzantine-esque empire in DC these days. Similar to that analogy, Venice had a very intertwined and at times adversarial relationship with Constantinople. Here's a post I wrote partway through the book, part of the Contraptions book club for January:

I finished reading City of Fortune over the weekend. It's a history of Venice, an early example of a "virtual" city without natural resources other than a built in moat and pulling itself up with grit, gumption and a lot of warehouses. It kinda reminds me of Amazon to the Byzantine-esque empire in DC these days. Similar to that analogy, Venice had a very intertwined and at times adversarial relationship with Constantinople. Here's a post I wrote partway through the book, part of the Contraptions book club for January: https://pioneeringspirit.xyz/of-upstart-entrepots-and-dying-empires

(paɪəˈnɪərɪŋ ˈspɪrɪt) a willingness to endure hardship in order to explore new places or try out new the new
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Crowley is a great storyteller. Had the pleasure of reading this in 2019 while on a vacation in the Greek islands.