In 1484, humanist philosopher and theologian Marsilio Ficino published the first complete Latin translation of Plato's extant works. Plato's Persona is the first book to undertake a synthetic study of Ficino's interpretation of the Platonic corpus.

A groundbreaking work of intellectual history, The Lost Italian Renaissance uncovers a priceless intellectual legacy suggests provocative new avenues of research.

A study of the 15th-century Italian revival of interest in the Platonic dialogues. It aims to show how the interpretation of Plato was moulded by the expectations of 15th-century readers, by the need to protect Plato against his critics and by the hermeneutical attitudes and practices of the time.

Western Europeans were among the first, if not the first, to invent mechanical clocks, geometrically precise maps, double-entry bookkeeping, precise algebraic and musical notations, and perspective painting. By the sixteenth century more people were thinking quantitatively in western Europe than in any other part of the world. The Measure of Reality, first published in 1997, discusses the epochal shift from qualitative to quantitative perception in Western Europe during the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. This shift made modern science, technology, business practice and bureaucracy possible.