The work of the Renaissance humanists comes to life in Anthony Grafton's exploration of the primary sources and modern scholarship, classical and modern elements in the world of European letters from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century.

Tracing the ties that bound the world of humanistic learning in early modern Europe to other social and cultural spheres, Grafton defines the current state of the art of scholarship on early modern European cultural and intellectual history while simultaneously demonstrating how entertaining, enlightening, and relevant that history can be.

Covering a dazzling variety of topics and authors as different as Alberti and Descartes, Grafton maps the grand and meticulous efforts of the past to connect the realm of nature with that of books, the realm of everyday experience with that of passionate reading in massive tomes, and the realm of codes of etiquette and institutions with that of extravagant and joyous erudition--efforts that this book itself brilliantly carries on.

Anthony Grafton is Henry Putnam University Professor of History and Chair of the Council of the Humanities at Princeton University.

Read More by Anthony Grafton:

• Cardano's Cosmos: The Worlds and Works of a Renaissance Astrologer
• The Footnote: A Curious History
• Defenders of the Text: The Traditions of Scholarship in an Age of Science, 1450-1800
• New Worlds, Ancient Texts: The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery
• Leon Battista Alberti: Master Builder of the Italian Renaissance
• Christianity and the Transformation of the Book: Origen, Eusebius, and the Library of Caesarea
• The Classical Tradition
• Worlds Made by Words: Scholarship and Community in the Modern West