The Portable Renaissance Reader

The editors of the Portable ?? Reader have done another good job of selecting writings from the later period, which they definitely place between the years 1400 to 1600, and in their choice of many lesser known authors have made their book for a more discerning audience than Haydn and Nelson's A Renaissance Treasury, recently published by Doubleday. Arranged in roughly chronological periods, the five sections of the book deal first with an overall appraisal of "An Age of Gold"; the cultural trends in the newly arisen "City of Man"; education and the arts- "The Study of Man"; scientific discovery- "The Book of Nature"; and religious thought, "The Kingdom of God". While they recognize greats of the period'- Petrarch, Boccaccio, Machiavelli, Alberti, Erasmus, Cervantes, Rabelais, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Galileo, Luther, considerable space is given to such men as Vives the Spanish sociologist, Palissy "the philosophical potter" of France, Aldus Manutius without whose thriving Venetian printing press many of the works of his age might not have appeared. A helpful comparative table of political, economic, religious and cultural events prefaces the anthology, and the clarity of the editors' introduction presents the period in its always new and interesting light. Required handbook for the many who lack time and energy to go to the sources themselves. (Kirkus Reviews)