The work of the Renaissance humanists comes to life in this exploration of European letters from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century. 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.

Anthony Grafton is the author of The Footnote, Defenders of the Text, Forgers and Critics, and Inky Fingers, among other books. The Henry Putnam University Professor of History and the Humanities at Princeton University, he writes regularly for the New York Review of Books.