From the Book - 1st Anchor books ed.
Rome gives the world a calendar
The Roman Republic and our own
Julius Caesar and the imperial purple
Catullus revolutionizes love poetry
Master builders of the ancient world
Ovid's treasure hoard of myth and fable
St. Benedict: father of Western monasticism, preserver of the Roman heritage
Salerno and Bologna: the earliest medical school and university
Emperor Frederick II, King of Sicily and Jerusalem
St. Thomas Aquinas: Titan of theology
Dante's incomparable Comedy
Banks, bookkeeping, and the rise of commerical capitalism
Petrarch: creator of the modern lyric
Boccaccio and the development of Western literary realism
The mystic as activist: St. Catherine of Siena
Inventors of the visual language of the Renaissance: Brunelleschi, Donatello, Masaccio
Lorenzo Ghiberti and the "Gates of Paradise"
Cosimo and Lorenzo de' Medici, grand patrons of art and learning
Sigismondo Malatesta: the condottiere with a vision
Leonardo da Vinci: Renaissance man, eternal enigma
A new world beckons: Columbus, Cabot, Vespucci, Verrazano
Machiavelli and the dawn of modern political science
Michelangelo: epitome of human artistry
Sprezzatura and Castiglione's concept of the gentleman
Aretino: self-publicist, pornographer, "secretary of the world"
Giovanni Della Casa's Galateo: etiquette book par excellence
Andrea Palladio and his "bible" of building
Catherine de' Medici: godmother of French cuisine
Peri's Euridice: the birth of opera from the spirit of tragedy
Galileo frames the foundations of modern science
Two sonorous gifts: the violin and the piano
Claudio Monteverdi, father of modern music
The baroque splendors of Bernini
Pioneers of modern anatomy: Eustachio, Fallopio, Malpighi, Morgagni, et. al.
Founder of modern penology: Cesare Beccaria
Trailblazers in electricity: Galvani and Volta
Venice: rhapsody in stone, water, melody, and color
Europe's premier poet of pessimism: Giacomo Leopardi
Giuseppe Garibaldi: a united Italy emerges
The last "Renaissance" prince: D'Annunzio at Fiume
La Dottoressa: Maria Montessori and a new era in early childhood education
Marconi invents the radio
Enrico Fermi: father of the atomic age
Roberto Rossellini: neorealist cinema and beyond
An unlikely international bestseller: Lampedusa's The Leopard
Ferrari: on the road to perfection
La moda italiana: the art of apparel.
