Perhaps one of the clearest scholarly works on Venice is Frederic C. Lane's Venice: A Maritime Republic. It is a thorough analysis of the maritime, financial, manufacturing, and economic aspects of the republic; how they shaped the government and its policies as well as the populace and its relationships both domestic and foreign.
For a more popular, though no less scholarly history there is John Julius Norwich's A History of Venice. Norwich weaves a dramatic tale of the gradual rise of Venice, its imperial apex, and slow but inexorable decline in the face of the increasingly more powerful nation states and empires of Europe as well as the shift of Oriental trade from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic.
One more book, a collection of reports written by Venetian ambassadors, is Pursuit of Power, edited by James C. Davis. These reports offer a glimpse into how the Venetians viewed their world and their place in it.