Casanova: Actor, Lover, Priest, Spy

"A sheer testament to the power of the written word." (The New York Times)

Giacomo Casanova's energy was dazzling. He made and lost fortunes, founded state lotteries, and wrote forty-two books and 3,600 pages of memoirs recording the tastes and smells of the years before the French Revolution-as well as his affairs and sexual encounters with dozens of women and a handful of men.

Historian Ian Kelly draws on previously unpublished documents from the Venetian Inquis…