Fantastic collection of writings.

books:


	• The Family in Renaissance Florence (I libri della famiglia), Books One-Four Leon Battista Alberti Waveland Press, Inc., 2004 - 328 pages average customer review:based on 1 review view larger image
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Fantastic collection of writings.

Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472) was an odd duck in his way. He was born illegitimate, died single, and definitely didn't like women all that much. So of course he wrote one of the most popular how-to books in his day. Taking the form of a dialog similar to Plato's writings, he teaches several young men how to be good husbands, fathers, and citizens. This collection here comprises his four books, translated into English. There are no references to the original Italian, but the translation sounds about right. You'll certainly learn almost every aspect of what it was to live as a Florentine man during this era--how to pick a wife, how to be a good father, how to educate kids, how to treat your parents, how to arrange your daughters' marriages, the best sort of home life to cultivate, how to train your bride to be a good wife and mother, how to avoid debt and how to properly be a gentleman farmer, and much more.

This book isn't that great a read, like most books written at that time. Platonic dialogs aren't the fastest or more enjoyable recreational reading in the world at best, and Alberti's got a high-handed style that isn't easy to digest in big chunks. What it will do in spades is help you understand how life worked at the time for Renaissance-era men and women.

The index of the book is woefully inadequate; I ended up reading mine page-by-page and just making my own from scratch. There's also no bibliography to support the extensive introduction to Alberti's life and times, though there are footnotes where the author does cite. Overall it's the best collection of Alberti's writings I've found, and so I'd recomment it wholeheartedly. But please understand this isn't recreational reading; it's for research, and while it has shortcomings, I know of no better source or translation for this book. If you study Renaissance history, you're going to need a copy of this book.

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The four books of The Family in Renaissance Florence do not present a single, homogeneously bourgeois outlook. They are a monument of attitudes. Written as a dialogue, they express conflicting points of view, enabling today?s readers to relive social and moral conflicts that troubled early capitalist society. Alberti?s personages confront much of what it means to be consciously urban?to experience social mobility, to recognize the psychological as well as the practical importance of purchased commodities, to wish in vain for stable families and firm public authority amid fluctuating fortunes and alliances.

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