The Bookseller of Florence

In the mid-fifteenth-century it must have seemed as if all the wisdom of the world was distilled into a single street in Florence. In this deft, sparkling book, Ross King reanimates the Street of Booksellers and the life of its most fascinating figure: Vespasiano da Bisticci

Peter Moore, author of Endeavour: The Ship and the Attitude that Changed the World

A brilliant narrative that seamlessly weaves together intellectual debate, technological exploration and the excitement of new ways of thinking about ethics, politics and human capability

Rowan Williams

The Bookseller of Florence does for books what Ross King did for the art of Brunelleschi, Leonardo and Michelangelo: it conjures a vivid, lost world of manuscripts and learning. Written with an exquisite touch and enviable flair, King has written a book in defence of the pursuit of knowledge that's needed today more than ever

Jerry Brotton, author of A History of the World in Twelve Maps

A beautifully constructed work of popular scholarship, at once celebratory and elegiac. Ross King skilfully illuminates the career, interests and connections of a fifteenth-century maker of manuscript books, and in the process paints a compelling picture of Florence in the age of the Medici, and of the fascinating, fractured world of the European Renaissance, in the decades witnessing the final fall of the Byzantine Empire and the fateful appearance of the new technology of print

Peter Marshall, author of Heretics and Believers: A History of the English Reformation

Magnificent . . . King's meticulous research provides an immersive reading experience as he expertly weaves the political intrigue of families vying for power and currying favour with the pope into a riveting intellectual history covering the evolution of books, Renaissance Italy, classical philosophy and literature, and the invention of the printing press. A profoundly engaging study of a time when books were considered essential to a meaningful life, and knowledge and wisdom were cherished as ends in themselves

Bill Kelly, Booklist

A terrific and utterly absorbing read, full of narrative pace and remarkable breadth and depth of scholarship. It deserves to make the bestseller lists . . . I haven't enjoyed a history book as much for years

John Guy

A spectacular life of the book trade's Renaissance man . . . King's supreme ability is to imagine himself into the past . . . The scope of his knowledge is staggering

John Carey, Sunday Times

In this fascinating biography, King weaves Vespasiano's story into the fabric of the tumultuous times in which he lived . . . The result is a narrative about a man and his books, and so much more, including the origins and history of the Frankfurt Book Fair and the influence of Johannes Gutenberg and his printing press on the arc of history

Linda Frederiksen, Library Journal

Excellent . . . a fascinating read . . . Though ostensibly a biography of Vespasiano, he is less the book's subject than its method: a window on to the intellectual, political and technological developments of a time in radical ferment . . . entertaining, witty and expert

Tim Smith-Laing, Daily Telegraph

The Bookseller of Florence is a way of entering the world of Renaissance humanism and its fascination with the writings of the past at a time when these were still - but not for much longer - handwritten

Charles Saumarez Smith, Oldie

If you want to celebrate the place that bookmaking and bookselling still have in our lives . . . immerse yourself in Ross King's rich history of Vespasiano da Bisticci, "the king of the world's booksellers," in 15th-century Florence . . . wonderful

Simon Schama, New York Times

A marvel of storytelling and a master class in the history of the book. The Bookseller of Florence is a dazzling, instructive and highly entertaining book, worthy of the great bookseller it celebrates

Ernest Hilbert, Wall Street Journal

The Bookseller of Florence is a delight, a popular history that makes the complexities of the past understandable... [an] enthralling book

Sarah Dunant, Literary Review