That I gave this book a chance was mostly on the strength of the Fletcher's performance with her life and times of Alessandro de Medici. However, while this book is not lacking in virtue, I do have some issues with it, starting with the title. If truth in advertising was in effect, it would be called "Early Modern Italy: Cultural Efflorescence and Political Decline," as this is basically just a history of the so-called "Italian Wars," as the Italian peninsula became a cockpit for the Valois-Hapsburg dynastic conflict, and the Italian city-states became marginalized by the initial rise of the nation-state.

This is a reasonably good study so far as it goes, but whether Fletcher really achieves her goal of putting the players in the Italy of the time in proper relation to each other for the general reader is another question; I can see this work being too indigestible for that. Though it would probably make a good college undergrad textbook. I will say that what Fletcher does well is to incorporate the conflicts of religious practice and authority of the time into her general study; Martin Luther and various Catholic popes are as important in this narrative as any artist or king. ( )