"In stunning archival detail, Alexander More documents novel health-supporting policies of the Republic of Venice, interventions in place long before the Black Death. He demonstrates that nothing less than unwavering attention to the general welfare and common good of its population ensured the stability and security of the Venetian state for more than six hundred years."?Ann G. Carmichael, emerita professor of history, Indiana University, Bloomington

"Only Dr. Alexander More could combine the rigor of a scientist, the archival command of a historian, and the narrative mastery of a novelist in this engaging and necessary history of the relationship between climate?both environmental and political?and public welfare. He takes the Venetian Republic as his laboratory, but his conclusions are urgent for our own moment, and our own 'commonwealth,' of America in the twenty-first century."?Katherine Howe, New York Times?bestselling and award-winning historian and novelist

"Commonwealth radically rethinks the origins of public health and welfare not in modern states, but in premodern Venice. As a historical innovator, More uses grain controls, medical provisioning, and environmental management to reveal not episodic charity but embedded responses to volatility. Welfare was core to premodern governance?a timely and compelling lesson."?Walton O. Schalick III, medical director, Central Wisconsin Center, and faculty member, University of Wisconsin?Madison

"Alexander More's book prompts a relevant question: If the Venetian Republic concluded eight centuries ago that profiting from human illness threatens both the health of the patient and the state itself, shouldn't twenty-first-century America examine their successful alternative?providing universal health care for our citizens?"?Paul G. Kirk, Jr., former US senator from Massachusetts, former chairman of the JFKLibrary Foundation Board of Directors