"Convulsed by a civilizational crisis, the great thinkers of the Renaissance set out to reconceive the nature of society. Everywhere they saw problems. Corrupt and reckless tyrants sowing discord and ruling through fear; elites who prized wealth and status over the common good; military leaders waging endless wars. Their solution was at once simple and radical. "Men, not walls, make a city," as Thucydides so memorably said. They would rebuild their...

A Rome-based American historian tells the extraordinary story of Caterina Sforza, perhaps the most prominent woman of Renaissance Italy, who was a wife, a mother, a leader, and a warrior with the courage to battle a Borgia pope, the charm to beguile a Medici husband, and the fierceness to make Machiavelli himself wince.

In the tradition of Galileo's Daughter and Brunelleschi's Dome, this exciting story illuminates the captivating world of the late Renaissance'in this case its plagues, remedies, and alchemy 'through the life of Leonardo Fioravanti, a brilliant, remarkably forward-thinking, and utterly unconventional doctor. Fioravanti's marvelous cures and talent for self-aggrandizement earned him the adoration of the people, the scorn of the medical establishment,...

Lively and reader-friendly, this second edition of Daily Life in Renaissance Italy provides a colorful and accurate sense of how it felt to inhabit the Renaissance Italian world (1400-1600). In clearly written chapters, the book moves from Renaissance Italy's geography to its society, and then to family. It also looks at hierarchies, moralities, devices for keeping social order, media and communications and the arts, space, time, the life cycle, material...

In ten chapters--each an important moment in food history, from Ancient Rome to Al-Andalus in Spain, from the Ethiopian Empire to nineteenth-century New York City--the authors pair menus with immersive retellings of historic culinary breakthroughs, and present the ingredients and modern techniques adapted for today's kitchens to allow cooks of all abilities to entertain with dishes that were created and enjoyed hundreds of years ago but remain relevant...

Some five hundred years ago, Sandro Botticelli, a painter of humble origin, created works of unearthly beauty. A star of Florence's art world, he was commissioned by a member of the city's powerful Medici family to execute a near-impossible project: to illustrate all one hundred cantos of The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, the ultimate visual homage to that "divine" poet. This sparked a gripping encounter between poet and artist, between the religious...

"Michelangelo created some of the world's most recognizable art, from the statue of David to the intricate ceiling fresco of the Sistine Chapel. Beyond his well-known painting and sculpting, he was a gifted poet and architect. Young readers can learn about the entirety of Michelangelo's life, from his time as a young apprentice, and his relationships with several Catholic popes and the Medici family, to his unwillingness to stop working into his late...

In Italy in 1491, Magnus the magician and his apprentice are summoned to the castle of Duke Claudio to determine if his daughter is indeed being haunted by a ghost.