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Historical Encyclopedia of the Renaissance $700.00 / Scribner's / 2000 The Encyclopedia of the Renaissance is one of the most excellently produced, carefully written, wide-ranging, and useful encyclopedias published in recent years. Designed for all readers, the collection achieves a rare balance of interpretation, with an impressive range of subject matter, making it a useful resource and learning tool. The Encyclopedia makes efforts to be modern by modestly including recent theory. It contains, for instance, a section on Rape, in which we learn that gang rape was a common threat to women who traveled unaccompanied by men. The article points to the uncertainty and newness of scholarship on rape, at the same time suggesting the importance of tackling such difficult and poorly documented topics. A test case of the balanced light brought to the past by the more ecumenical investigations of modern scholarship can be seen in the articles on Jewish Philosophy, Messianism, Science, and Community in the Renaissance. But other articles necessarily suffer from the need to stuff difficult matter into a small space. In spite of the range of topics devoted to Women (in Renaissance, Literature, Protest, Philosophy, Art, as Holy, as Temptress), no clear picture emerges to answer the question, "Did women have a Renaissance?" Perhaps reflecting a lack of consesus in the field, such articles represent an opportunity to summarize and distill the spirit of modern research that is surely lost. Still, the Encyclopedia is remarkable for the quality of its articles and its selection of topics, where new and obscure figures and subjects are brought before our eyes. Whole family lines, individual printing presses, specialties such as calligraphy, and social phenomena such as prostituion, all receive excellent, concise, and well-written treatment here, as well as bibliographies of the latest literature. One senses that no topic is a stranger to this remarkable, state-of-the-art Encyclopedia. —Duke Shadow

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