-[a] rich synthesis of some of the central concerns and insights that have shaped the social history of early modern Italy in the last generation. As a primer, directed at an audience of early undergraduates(even final-year high school students), and a more general readership, it serves both as an entree to thinking historically and to the social anthropology of Italy between roughly 1400 and 1600. On both counts it is an excellent introduction, above all for its lightness of touch. A wealth of material and an often nuanced, if compacted, analysis is put across with great economy, clarity, and imagination....[a] finely tuned work, both in its content and methodological apparatus....The poise and lucidity of the exposition should make this book an invaluable pedagogical tool, a point of departure, as the authors say in their conclusion, for the student's own explorations. —The Sixteenth Century Journal

-Clearly written as a textbook for undergraduates in renaissance survey classes, this volume fits that niche well and also offers a suggestive overview of the current state of scholarship on everyday life in renaissance Italy....[t]his textbook is on cutting edge of exciting new knowlage....[t]he everyday world that they present is at once alien and familiar, strange, and exciting. Students should find this book an intriguingly different perspective on the Italian renaissance. —Journal of Social History