THE VENETIAN EMPIRE A Sea Voyage<i> by Jan Morris (Penguin: $7.95, illustrated) </i>

This affectionate, somewhat romanticized account of the Venetian Stato da Mar combines elements of a travelogue with social and political history. When Doge Enrico Dandolo arranged the sack of Constantinople by the armies of the Fourth Crusade in 1203, Venice acquired an overseas empire, almost as an afterthought. These islands and coastal enclaves were used to protect the trade routes to the East, but the Venetians proved to be erratic governors. Crete and Cyprus were so badly mismanaged that revolts became endemic, while Corfu was so well administered, it remained a bastion of the empire until 1797, when Napoleon extinguished the millennium-old Venetian republic.

Jan Morris blends descriptions of the lands and ruins with the story of their fall to the advancing Ottoman Turks; her nostalgic evocation of the splendors, tyrannies and follies of the Serenissima will delight patrons of the Renaissance Pleasure Faire.