In the late 20th and 21st centuries, the meteoric rise of countless social media platforms and mobile applications have illuminated the profound need friendship and connection have in all of our lives; and yet, very few scholarly volumes have focused on this unique and important bond during this new era of relating to one another. Exploring such topics as friendship and social media, friendship with current and past romantic partners, co-workers, mentors, and even pets, editors Mahzad Hojjat and Anne Moyer lead an expert group of global contributors as they each explore how friendship factors within our lives today. What does it mean to be a friend? What roles do friendships play in our own development? How do we befriend those across the race, ethnicity, gender, and orientation spectrums? What happens when a friendship turns sour? What is the effect of friendship - good and bad - on our mental health? Providing a much needed update to the field of interpersonal relations, The Psychology of Friendship serves as a field guide for readers as they shed traditional definitions of friendship in favor of contemporary contexts and connections.

By the sixteenth century, Florence was famous across Europe for its achievements in the arts, letters, and humanist learning. Its intellectual life flourished anew at midcentury with Duke Cosimo and the Accademia Fiorentina. In this study, Ann Moyer provides an overview of Florentine intellectual life and community in the late Renaissance. She shows how studies of language helped Florentines develop their own story as a people distinct from ancient Greece or Rome, trace the rise of the city's medieval government, and explore how the city evolved into a hospitable environment for letters and the arts. Studies of Florentine art gave rise to art history, while those devoted to Florentine traditions and customs inspired broader questions about how to think about cultural change. Demonstrating how the intellectual activity around language, history, and art related and supported each other, Moyer's book documents the origins of the modern narrative of the Renaissance itself.