Worldly Goods is a remarkable achievement. Most previous attempts to explain the Renaissance, and they are many, have concentrated on the fashioning of a new cultural identity. Jardine is concerned with that, too, but her approach is via the material culture of the period. By looking at commodities, which range from pictures to printed books, from maps to jeweled helmets, at who these things were by and form whom, Lisa Jardine offers the reader not only a lively and sometimes startling vision of a world in transition, but also an entirely new approach to the Renaissance. -- from back dust ... [details]