Review:
Although he contributed thing to the world, Casanova is pretty well known even after two centuries and has a reputation for being a great lover. However, his attitude toward a pretty woman was, "I fell in love with her, and offered her money to try and seduce her." This describes the thoughts of most of the women: "as I did not give myself up to you with any criminal intention, I do not think I have offended God.” In defense of his own life of immorality, Casanova said, "even amidst my vices I was always a passionate lover of virtue."

Casanova didn't know the difference between love and lust. Certainly, not the difference between right and wrong. He used women and cast them aside when he didn't love them any more or found another more beautiful. Any age would do, but he preferred 14- or 15-year-old girls - who had no modesty that money wouldn't overcome. Or, if the parents were poor, the child's virginity would willingly be sold as she was their only "asset."

This book is filled with gross immorality of all kinds. Not only among the nobility and the "best" people of Europe but down to the lowest peasants, as well. Casanova's life was filled with gambling and debauchery - often, resulting in diseases. People had no respect for marriage but openly had sex with anyone they lusted after. Often, with three to a bed or with others watching. They were without shame - acted upon their instincts as though they were the lowest of animals. Sex between a father and daughter or sister and brother was taboo, but Casanova believed that it shouldn't be. Most of the people were Roman Catholics without God or a god who loved them so much that he forgave their being unable to resist satisfying their basest desires. Catholics in name only although many of them had a confessor and attended Mass. Of course, their confessors and other Ecclesiastics were just as immoral. Including the Pope, monks and nuns.

This statement of Casanova's says a lot about Italy at the time of Casanova: "the wives ...boasted of their wickedness, and challenged the (young) girls to be more shameless than they. The girls were not common courtezans,... The kind of society may be imagined when I say that I found myself a perfect novice amongst them... The company rose from table, and then began a foul orgy which I should never have conceived possible, and which no pen could describe, though possibly a seasoned profligate might get some idea of it."

The book is well written and, no doubt, a fairly accurate account of Casanova's life. He wrote and published his memoirs when he was elderly. The fact that his book sold well and is still does says a lot for the people of the eighteenth century - as the cheap, explicit-sex novels do of our age. It says a lot about us, today, too, that Barnes and Noble has about thirty different printings of the book in English. There are more in foreign languages. People, without Jesus Christ, are, indeed base animals who live for sexual pleasure. "Whatever feels good, do it."

Hollywood had made a movie about Casanova, and I soon found out the reason: immorality in every sense of the word. Why did I read such an immoral and disgusting book? Actually, I read very few pages consecutively. I skipped a lot so that I'd get a good idea of what he wrote about. I kept hoping that he'd repent and become a decent human being, but he never did. (Knowing the ending won't affect your reading. It's not a mystery. In fact, his thoughts and behavior never changed from his first childhood experience of sex through old age.)