We moderns often view the past through the warm mists of over-idealization or the dark clouds of easy condemnation. The past is either impossibly great or astonishingly primitive. In either case it is hard for us to recognize it as human experience, as complicated and as bafflingly rational and irrational as our own.

One of the outstanding virtues of City of Fortune, Roger Crowley’s wonderful new history of 500 years (1000 AD to 1500 AD) of Venice’s rise and decline as a commercial, seafaring empire, is that he sees Venice as “almost shockingly modern.” He writes vividly about Venice’s remarkably sophisticated management and trading systems and their skillful diplomacy in an era when the Venetian republic struggled—often violently—against economic competitors like the Byzantine Empire, the Genoese and the Ottoman Empire to control and profit from worldwide trade, especially trade with China and India.

Venice was a city of the water, rather than the land. It was, Crowley writes beautifully, “a city grown hydroponically, conjured out of marsh.” As such, it organized itself communally, with a modern, rather than feudal, desire to dominate international commerce. And that commercial instinct made it an open society, very willing to bend or evade the religious proscriptions of the Pope and to deal with so-called infidels. Still, it was the Venetian willingness to underwrite Pope Innocent III’s Fourth Crusade that led to its early dominance, fascinatingly detailed in the opening section of City of Fortune. But Venice’s economic interests unhappily shifted the focus of the Fourth Crusade from conquering the Islamic-controlled Holy Lands to extracting concessions from the Christian Eastern Orthodox empire headquartered in Constantinople. As Crowley writes, “the sack of Constantinople burned a hole in Christian history; it was the scandal of the age and Venice was held deeply complicit in the act.”

That, of course, is only the beginning of the story of Venice’s remarkable rise, triumph and downfall. But in that early victory Crowley sees the seeds of the republic’s tragic demise: Venice’s subjugation of Constantinople opened space for the rise of the Ottoman Empire, which would eventually rein in—sometimes brutally—Venice’s commercial empire.

And, as Crowley, who also wrote the New York Times bestseller Empire of the Sea, points out near the end of City of Fortune, there were other contributing factors at work. Portugal’s success in sending ships around the Horn of Africa to Kolkata, for example, was a paradigm shift in international trade that undermined Venice’s position in the inland Mediterranean and Black Seas.

The “lessons of history” are often not as obvious as we would hope. But Roger Crowley’s vivid City of Fortune offers a contemporary reader a compelling narrative and many lessons to think about.

Vienna circa 1900 was a virtual paradise for artists, intellectuals and those who enjoyed their company. It was during this cultural golden age that the painter Gustav Klimt, having pulled himself up from poverty and into fame as a “workaholic artist and serial philanderer,” created his best-known works. Among them was a portrait, three years in the making, of Adele Bloch-Bauer, born in Vienna but of Jewish descent. She was The Lady in Gold.

Anne-Marie O’Connor’s book traces the history of the famous painting as well as those whose lives it intersected. The title alone tells part of the story: When the Nazis stole the painting during the war, leaving Bloch-Bauer’s name attached to it would have meant acknowledging that the painting’s subject was Jewish; far simpler then to reduce her to “the lady in gold.” Thus “Adele’s identity disappeared with a simple stroke of the pen.” Sixty years after its theft, the painting became the subject of lengthy litigation between Bloch-Bauer’s surviving family members and the Austrian government, a case that improbably ended up before the U.S. Supreme Court. The painting was ultimately returned to the heirs and sold at auction for a record sum. It’s currently on display in a New York gallery, but O’Connor’s focus is more on the journey than its end point.

The biographical sketches of Klimt, Bloch-Bauer and their families and community are richly drawn. While any book following the plight of Jews in Vienna at the time of the Holocaust will of course be full of sorrows, there are bright spots and humor as well. Having the paintings returned brings nobody back to life, but they do testify to a time when the Jewish elite were not just accepted but celebrated in Vienna. Klimt, derided by critics for “objectifying” women, found them to be his greatest champions for acknowledging and portraying female sexuality. It’s widely known that he carried on affairs with his models, and the historical assumption is that Adele Bloch-Bauer was no exception, but there is no proof to be found. One of Klimt’s grandsons was asked about it and, acknowledging there’s no way to tell, nevertheless added, “I’m certain he tried.”

Part history and part mystery, The Lady in Gold is a striking tale.

When Roger Williams was born in England, probably in 1603, the feudal system was dying, capitalism was being born and there were rivalries with other countries. Religion did not offer solace. The interpretation and understanding of the Christian faith was a major source of conflict. Within a 25-year period, England went from Catholic rule to Protestant, then back to Catholic and back to Protestant. To guarantee loyalty, Parliament required all officeholders, all priests and all university students to swear an Oath of Supremacy to the monarch as “the only supreme Governor of the Realm . . . as well as in all Spiritual and Ecclesiastical things.” Parliament’s Act of Uniformity required all subjects to attend weekly worship at their parish church. Failure to attend worship or refusing to participate in the full liturgy was a crime and a subversive act.

Widely praised historian John M. Barry, author of the best-selling The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History, states at the outset of his magnificent new book that it is “a story about power.” Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty is the absorbing narrative of the personal and intellectual journey of the scholarly and pious Puritan minister who became a tireless advocate for the separation of church and state. Exiled into the wilderness for his beliefs and his refusal to keep his dissent private, he established Providence as a haven for those persecuted for their religious beliefs and created the world’s first democracy.

Barry details the lasting influence on Williams, in quite different ways, of Sir Edward Coke and Sir Francis Bacon and the rarefied circles in which they moved. Coke, perhaps the greatest jurist in English history, was a mentor to the much younger Williams, whom he hired to take notes in shorthand. Coke held an extraordinary number of key offices and made seminal contributions to the law that we take for granted. He displayed the courage to challenge even the Crown if he believed it to be wrong. Williams would not forget Coke’s strong emphasis on the rights of the individual, best recognized in one of his judicial decrees: “Every Englishman’s home is as his castle.” Coke and Bacon were bitter political rivals, and the latter’s influence on Williams was quite different. From him Williams learned the importance of reaching conclusions based on evidence from the real world, a valuable insight in a society where many were guided more by religious beliefs or preconceived notions.

Barry uses extensive excerpts from the writings of Williams and his contemporaries to illustrate their various points of view. He shows, for example, how conformity was in many ways at the heart of John Winthrop’s famous sermon that refers to “a citty [Winthrop’s spelling] upon a hill.” Massachusetts was a purpose-driven society and its purpose was to advance God’s interests on the earth. If not a theocracy, the community was theocentric. Before any major decisions were made, the governor and other leaders listened to the opinions of the leading ministers. Massachusetts tolerated private dissent but it demanded public conformity to the perceived will of God.

It is important to emphasize that Williams and Winthrop shared the same theology, a belief that the Bible was the Word of God, and the same devotion to Christ, and they believed that Christ would be coming back to the earth soon. But Williams was not one to conform; he believed a society could not advance without asking questions. As a serious biblical scholar, he was able to correct and reinterpret passages of Scripture to counter the arguments of his adversaries.

What was new in Williams’ greatest work, The Bloody Tenent, was the break between the material world and the spiritual world and the conclusions he reached about politics and religion. He proposed not just “Soul Libertie,” the essence of individual freedom, but went beyond that to a theory of the state that leads to a democratic society. This was written at a time when neither church leaders nor members of Parliament were advocating democracy. In the same book Williams made his original and revolutionary claim that it was the people who were sovereign.

This rich work by a master historian enlightens on every page.

With the Arab Spring occupying much of the media lately, resistance and liberation are not far from anyone’s mind these days. Caroline Moorehead looks at the topic from a new angle in A Train in Winter, which tells the story of 231 women of the French Resistance imprisoned during the German invasion of World War II. Moorehead weaves a historically accurate narrative of women banding together for survival in the face of death and deprivation.

The women’s story begins at the start of the German invasion, with teachers, students, chemists and writers printing anti-Nazi newspapers, transporting weapons, helping Jews to safety and relaying messages of the resistance. They were young and old, from cities and villages, and all determined to save their France. This defiance led to their eventual capture by the Gestapo, bringing them together first in a fort-turned-prison outside Paris and later, in the end, at Auschwitz in 1943.

With cooperation and resourcefulness, these women kept themselves educated, informed and safe, often hiding the sickest among them and putting on plays to maintain hope, as well as to remember who they were and were determined to be again. As many of the women died or heard of relatives and friends who died, their bond strengthened. “We didn’t stop to ask ourselves whom we liked and whom we didn’t,” one woman later explained. “It wasn’t so much friendship as solidarity. We just made certain we didn’t leave anyone alone.” This solidarity is what kept some alive and made sure that this story of terror, starvation and death was told.

By using original sources and giving each woman a name, the book can occasionally make the mind spin. However, the knowledge that these were real women makes the atrocities all the more real and their identities essential. The personal interviews and archival research are woven seamlessly into the narrative, making this war chronicle unforgettable. An appendix gives the names and stories of life and death of all 231 women.

Unforgettable and riveting, A Train in Winter is not an easy read. It is, however, an essential read for those who believe—or long to believe—in the power of friendship.

In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. Most of us know that. But few of us know that Columbus made three additional voyages to what he believed until the end of his life was an outpost of India, a gateway to China. These subsequent voyages were, as Laurence Bergreen writes, “each more adventurous and tragic than those preceding it.” Columbus’ final voyage, made between 1502 and 1504 when he was crippled by arthritis and other infirmities, is an astonishing tale of shipwreck and rebellion, and because of its hardships it was the journey, Bergreen says, that was Columbus’ favorite.

Bergreen has written highly praised books about other explorers—Over the Edge, about Ferdinand Magellan’s circumnavigation of the globe, and Marco Polo. That background allows him to provide both historical and psychological context in his portrait of Columbus. For example, knowing that Columbus was shaped by his youth in Genoa, at the time a fascinating but rapacious city-state that practiced slavery, casts his appalling enslavement of the native populations of the Caribbean in a somewhat different light. And Bergreen helps us understand the revolutionary nature of Columbus’ accomplishments, despite the fact that Columbus himself never quite grasped where he really was.

The Columbus who emerges here is an ambitious, adventurous, often autocratic man who has a “penchant for self-dramatization.” Deeply mystical, he believed he was on a mission from God, and through his knowledge of navigation he sometimes tricked his crews and the native populations into believing that too. On his third voyage he seemed delusional. “An aura of chaos hovers over his entire life and adventures,” Bergreen writes. In fact, one of the biggest surprises in Columbus: The Four Voyages is the discovery that Columbus was just as vilified in his own day as he has become in some quarters today.

In the end it is possible to respect but hard to admire Columbus. But it is easy to admire Bergreen’s account of Columbus’ life and his four voyages to the New World.