Henry Dwight Sedgwick's volume A Short History of Italy is an invaluable book on Italian history, taking a reader from the fall of the Roman Empire to the beginning of the twentieth century. The author gives an insight into the main points of Italian history like the decline and fall of the Western Roman Empire, the conquests at the hands of the Eastern Romans (Byzantines), the Normans, and other peoples, the rise of the Papacy, and the intriguing ministry of Francis of Assisi, the rise of Venice as a prominent medieval power, the Renaissance in all of its glory in science and the arts, the slow and steady movement towards Italian nationalism, the rise of the mafia in Southern Italy and Sicily and much more.