The dream Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar shared of uniting Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East in a single community shuddered and then collapsed in the wars and disasters of the sixth century. Historian and classicist James J. O'Donnell revisits this old story in a fresh way, bringing home its sometimes painful relevance to today's issues.

The astonishing life of Caterina Sforza, one of the most prominent women of Renaissance Italy, who was a wife, mother, leader, and warrior with enough fierceness to make Machiavelli himself wince.

A visionary burned as a heretic, Giordano Bruno was a rebel philosopher, daring poet, and early champion of an infinite universe. In this vivid biography, Ingrid D. Rowland brings to life a fearless thinker whose bold ideas helped shape the dawn of modern science—and still resonate today.

From the author of Memory and the Mediterranean, a comprehensive history of the Italian city states from 1450 to 1650.