Like every era, the Renaissance brims with stories. In this book, Robert Davis and Beth Lindsmith highlight dozens of notable lives from between 1400 and 1600. They bring to life wily politicians, eccentric scientists, fiery rebels and stolid reactionaries, as well as a pornographer, an acrobat, an actress, a poetic prostitute, a star comedian and a least one very fretful mother. Some names - Leonardo, Luther, Medici and Machiavelli - are famous, but many others will be new to general readers. Their stories, ninety-four in all, remind us that history is more than dates and abstract concepts: it also arises from the lives of countless individual men and women.

This major new collection of essays by leading scholars of Renaissance Italy transforms many of our existing notions about Renaissance politics, economy, social life, religion, medicine, and art. All the essays are founded on original archival research and examine questions within a wide chronological and geographical framework - in fact the pan-Italian scope of the volume is one of the volume's many attractions.Gender and Society in Renaissance Italy provides a broad, comprehensive perspective on the central role that gender concepts played in Italian Renaissance society.

This major new collection of essays by leading scholars of Renaissance Italy transforms many of our existing notions about Renaissance politics, economy, social life, religion, medicine, and art. All the essays are founded on original archival research and examine questions within a wide chronological and geographical framework - in fact the pan-Italian scope of the volume is one of the volume's many attractions."Gender and Society in Renaissance Italy" provides a broad, comprehensive perspective on the central role that gender concepts played in Italian Renaissance society.

In this authoritative volume, specialists from many fields of Jewish studies provide an introduction to the history of the ghetto of Venice and up-to-date scholarship on the subject from the perspectives of various disciplines--including political, economic, women's, institutional, social and cultural history, religious studies, and musicology. While the book's coverage extends throughout Venetian history and to the broader contexts of Italy, the main focus is the period when Jewish life in the city was at its most vigorous--from the early sixteenth to early eighteenth centuries, a period which saw the creation of both the cultural heritage and the physical architecture that came to characterize the ghetto.

The eleven essays constituting the volume are divided into three sections. The first section, titled "Settlement," provides a historical overview and topographical prologue. The second section, "Ethnicities and Identities," examines the varied social groups that combined to make up the ghetto community. The final section, "Cultures," looks at the traditions of faith, thought, and art which were produced in the Venetian ghetto over the centuries.

As the editors point out, the ghetto and its community "paradoxically was at the same time an integral part of the city of Venice while also rigorously excluded from it." The constraints of the ghetto and the concomitant interaction of various Jewish traditions produced a remarkable cultural flowering.

""Venice, the Tourist Maze" is a popular history of the tragic, at times comic, impact of mass tourism on Venice. The outlook for Venice as a living city seems bleak, but the story is fascinating. Davis and Marvin draw on everything from Baedekers to the local papers and contemporary interviews to examine the effect of this flood of people on urban experience and the delicate fabric of the city, depicting at best an aestheticized museum city, at worst a degraded theme park. In effect, the authors argue, Venice survives as a surreal image of itself. This is a fascinating and well-written book."--Carol Lansing, author of "Power & Purity: Cathar Heresy in Medieval Italy"
"Anyone inclined to pick up this book will experience over and over in the course of reading it shivers of intellectual play. For some, half the stimulation comes with the dismantling of a worn-out legend: Venice, the Most Romantic City in the World. For others, it will come while musing on the vivid contradictions revealing that what is good for Venice in the short term--revenue from tourism--is killing the city in the ever nearer long term. The authors may unwittingly encourage even more tourists to go to Venice for the most post-modern of reasons: to observe tourists observing the most touristed city in the world. "Venice, The Tourist Maze" is engrossing, amusing, fascinating, and troubling."--Sally McKee, author of "Uncommon Dominion, Venetian Crete and the Myth of Ethnic Purity"

The master ship builders of seventeenth-century Venice formed part of what was arguably the greatest manufacturing complex in early modern Europe. As many as three thousand masters, apprentices, and laborers regularly worked in the city's enormous shipyards. This is the social history of the men and women who helped maintain not only the city's dominion over the sea but also its stability and peace.

Drawing on a variety of documents that include nearly a thousand petitions from the shipbuilders to the Venetian governments as well as on parish records, inventories, and wills, Robert C. Davis offers a vivid and compelling account of these early modern workers. He explores their mentality and describes their private and public worlds (which in some ways, he argues, prefigured the factories and company towns of a later era). He uncovers the far-reaching social and cultural role played by women in this industrial community. He shows how the Venetian government formed its shipbuilders into a militia to maintain public order. And he describes the often colorful ways in which Venetians dealt with the tensions that role provoked -- including officially sanctioned community fistfights on the city's bridges.

The recent decision by the Italian government to return the Venetian Arsenal to civilian control has sparked renewed interest in the subject among historians. Shipbuilders of the Venetian Arsenal offers new evidence on the ways in which large, state-run manufacturing operations furthered the industrialization process, as well as on the extent of workers' influence on the social dynamics of the early modern European city.

This book discusses how some clinics have won significant gains at the appellate and federal court levels concerning victim standing, the rights to be consulted and heard, and the right to privacy. Some have won significant victories in gaining standing for victims and expanding the definition of particular rights. Others are enjoined in the battle. But all have raised awareness of victims' rights in the justice system.

"Holy War and Human Bondage: Tales of Christian-Muslim Slavery in the Early-Modern Mediterranean" tells a story unfamiliar to most modern readers--how this pervasive servitude involved, connected, and divided those on both sides of the Mediterranean. The work explores how men and women, Christians and Muslims, Jews and sub-Saharan Africans experienced their capture and bondage, while comparing what they went through with what black Africans endured in the Americas.

Drawing heavily on archival sources not previously available in English, "Holy War and Human Bondage" teems with personal and highly felt stories of Muslims and Christians who personally fell into captivity and slavery, or who struggled to free relatives and co-religionists in bondage.

In these pages, readers will discover how much race slavery and faith slavery once resembled one other and how much they overlapped in the Early-Modern mind. Each produced its share of personal suffering and social devastation--yet the whims of history have made the one virtually synonymous with human bondage while confining the other to almost complete oblivion.

This updated edition examines the latest regulatory and judicial developments involving the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) and provides a clear, practical explanation of its requirements. Using this book, you will learn how to manage the "field side" of RCRA compliance, including identifying hazardous waste, transporting hazardous materials under EPA and DOT regulations, and disposing of solid wastes. You will also learn how to manage the "paperwork side" of RCRA compliance, working with such documents as RCRA permits, manifests and land ban documents, and underground-storage-tank notices. New issues addressed in this edition include the new provisions regarding recycling, the corrective action program, and the regulation of combustion units; changes in enforcement policy, civil and criminal liability, and citizen suits; and new regulations regarding land disposal, underground storage tanks, facilities siting, and municipal solid waste management.

The War of the Fists explores early modern Venetian society through the lens of the festive combat which involved all classes, but especially the city's more marginal workers. It employs four different topical approaches: the social geography of Venetian factionalism; the structure of combat itself; the festive world which grew up around the encounters, providing workers with an alternative society of their own; and the response of the Venetian patriciate, government and police to this largely uncontrollable, plebeian entertainment.