The Deadly Sisterhood by Leonie Frieda: Book Beginning

The Friday 56: *Grab a book, turn to page 56 or 56% in your eReader. Find any sentence, (or few, just don't spoil it) that grabs you. Post it. Add your (url) post in Linky at Freda's Voice.
Also, visit Book Beginning at Rose City Reader.

The Deadly Sisterhood: A Story of Women, Power, and Intrigue in the Italian Renaissance 1427-1527 by Leonie Frieda, published April 2, 2013; HarperCollins.
Genre: non-fiction, history

Book beginning, first paragraph

Even after the passage of more than five hundred years, fifteenth-century Italy, that dangerous and exhilarating place, still glitters. Its power to dazzle remains undimmed. At the time, Italy provided little more than a geographical expression for the boot-shaped peninsula divided into 250 disparate and individual states, each with their own language or dialect, laws, currency customs and idiosyncrasies. They varied greatly, not least in size. The Duchy of Milan and the Republic of Venice, both at the northern end of the peninsula, were among the largest, though, territorially, neither could rival the Kingdom of Naples, usually referred to simply as 'the Kingdom'. These lands of the Aragonese kings stretched along the entire length of the country south of Rome, down to the tip of Italy. 

Page 56:

A noted theologian of humble origins, della Rovere had impressed the College of Cardinals, who hoped for a religious man rather than an aristocrat for Peter's throne. 

Book description: A Renaissance epic, as Christendom emerged from the calamitous 14th century. The tale involves inspired and corrupt monarchs, the finest thinkers, the most brilliant artists, and the greatest beauties in Christendom. 
The story of eight of its remarkable women, all joined by birth, marriage and friendship and who ruled for a time in place of their men-
folk: 
Lucrezia Turnabuoni (Queen Mother of Florence, the power behind the Medici throne), 
Clarice Orsini (Roman princess, feudal wife), 
Beatrice d'Este (Golden Girl of the Renaissance), 
Caterina Sforza (Lioness of the Romagna), 
Isabella d'Este (the Acquisitive Marchesa), 
Giulia Farnese ('la bella', the family asset), 
Isabella d'Aragona (the Weeping Duchess) and 
Lucrezia Borgia (the Virtuous Fury). 
The men play a secondary role in this grand saga; whenever possible the action is seen through the eyes our eight heroines. (publisher)

This is on my TBR shelf. What's on your reading list this weekend?