A collection of contemporary documents from Renaissance Florence. There's a surprising amount of real interest and quality here. Apart from the heavy-hitters, like an excerpt of Leonardo Bruni's History of the Florentine People (which seems to be shooting for a humanist Livy) and the preface to the first Florentine edition of the Divine Comedy, even those documents which have no business being at all readable, like the memoirs of otherwise unknown merchants, are strangely enjoyable. ( )