An Open Letters Review Best Book of the Year “Grafton presents largely unfamiliar material...in a clear, even breezy style...Erudite.” —Michael Dirda, Was

Discover different and surprising ways of creating pictures with finger- and handprints. Create handprint birds, lions and reindeer; invent strange creatures by

In this engrossing account, footnotes to history give way to footnotes as history, recounting in their subtle way the curious story of the progress of knowledge

This book traces the relationship between humanism and science from the mid-fifteenth century to the beginning of the modern period and demonstrates that humani