"The book examines how the Renaissance manifested itself through developments in the high culture of art, architecture, philosophy, science, technology, and education, as well as material culture in the form of worldly goods and consumption patterns. Ferraro expertly shows how Renaissance high culture began in 13th-century Italy, with important ancient and medieval legacies and cultural infusions from China, North Africa, and Islam and, from the 16th century, the Ottomans and the Americas; she also examines some of the ways in which this Renaissance then impacted the rest of Europe, the Americas, and the Ottoman Empire during the 15th and 16th centuries."