Renaissance category: 1000 books

The Barbary corsairs first appeared to terrorize shipping at the end of the fifteenth century. These Muslim pirates sailed out of the ports of North Africa, primarily Sal?, Rabat, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli. This area was known in Europe as the Barbary Coast, a term derived from the name of its Berber...

Winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction Winner of the 2011 National Book Award for Non-Fiction One of the world's most celebrated scholars, Stephen Greenblatt has crafted both an innovative work of history and a thrilling story of discovery, in which one manuscript, plucked from a...

Since the late fourteenth century, European artists created an extensive body of images, in paintings, prints, drawings, sculptures, and other media, about the horrors of disease and death, as well as hope and salvation. This interdisciplinary study on disease in metaphysical context is the first general...

“Remarkable, engaging.… Be Like the Fox can be read with pleasure by anyone interested in the craft of politics and the life of ideas.”—New York Times Book Review In the five hundred years since he wrote The Prince, Machiavelli’s name has been linked to tyranny and the doctrine that...

Here, from New York Times bestselling historian Vincent Cronin, is the extraordinary story of Italy - from the birth of the Roman Empire to the rise of the city-states through the Renaissance and the making of modern Italy.

Here, in this short-form book from acclaimed Oxford historian Hugh Trevor-Roper, is the story of the Renaissance doge Francesco Foscari, who led the Republic of Venice longer than any other man. His ambition and taste for controversy and flamboyance led him to a tragic end.

Magnifico is a vividly colorful portrait of Lorenzo de' Medici, the uncrowned ruler of Florence during its golden age. A true "Renaissance man," Lorenzo dazzled contemporaries with his prodigious talents and magnetic personality. Known to history as Il Magnifico (the Magnificent), Lorenzo was not...

By the age of thirty-one, the scholarly monk Desiderius Erasmus was the most renowned and revered humanist theologian in Renaissance Europe. A sickly man, driven by a childhood fear of the plague, Erasmus devoted his life to the goal of uplifting people through faith, reason, and education. He satirized...

Love history? Know your stuff with History in an Hour. The Reformation was a long struggle of ideas between the established Catholic Church and the questioning of faith brought about by the Renaissance in Western Europe. Started by Martin Luther in 1517, religious dissidence spread across Europe throughout...

“Like a Renaissance wonder cabinet, full of surprises and opening up into a lost world.” —Stephen Greenblatt “A captivating adventure…For lovers of history, Wilson-Lee offers a thrill on almost every page…Magnificent.” —The New York Times Book Review Named a Best Book...

William Manchester's A World Lit Only by Fire is the preeminent popular history of civilization's rebirth after the Dark Ages.

IN the night of the 24th of August, 410, Alaric, King of the Western Goths, entered Rome with his army, by the Salarian Gate -- outside of which Hannibal had encamped long ago--and took the Imperial City. Eleven hundred and sixty-four years had passed since its legendary foundation under Romulus;...

This is the definitive study of John Dee and his intellectual career. Originally published in 1988, this interpretation is far more detailed than any that came before and is an authoritative account for anyone interested in the history, literature and scientific developments of the Renaissance, or...

He is the most infamous and influential political writer of all time. His name has become synonymous with cynical scheming and the selfish pursuit of power. Niccolò Machiavelli, Florentine diplomat and civil servant, is the father of political science. His most notorious work, The Prince,...