Book excerpt: "The Italian Renaissance was a period of intense cultural transformations, when the ancient world was being rediscovered and a New World had been literally discovered. Between the 13th and the 17th centuries, traditional beliefs were being challenged, as people across the Italian Peninsula explored new ways of thinking about religion, politics, and society and introduced startling innovations in the arts. This book contains over a hundred selections of primary sources-the historian's raw material in the form of memoirs, letters, treatises, sermons, stories, poems, drawings, paintings, and sculpture. Here are eyewitness accounts of cold-blooded murders, lavish court pageants, the Sack of Rome, and the Black Death; first views of Michelangelo's Sistine frescoes and glimpses of the surface of the Moon through Galileo's telescope. These sources bring the reader into direct contact with the creators of the great Renaissance works of art, literature, philosophy, and science, as well as lesser-known people, who in their own words express emotions of love, loss, and spiritual yearning. Selected to accompany and supplement A Short History of Renaissance Italy, the primary sources in this book make it an ideal course reader for students of history or art history. Yet this volume can equally well be read on its own; each selection is clearly introduced, annotated, and provides references for further reading. These sources reach out to an audience beyond the classroom-the general reader, or the traveler to Italy-anyone curious to learn more about the Italian Renaissance will find themselves swept into conversation with these vibrant voices from the past"--