Trying to get a little better handle on stuff going on in Europe in this period. Helpful book (probably primarily intended as a textbook); but the topic is so vast that I don't know that I'm making any progress.As is true with so much historical reading - one is struck with the idea that "they lived so much like us" - certainly rings true for this fairly recent, increasingly commercial era.
Interesting stuff about the growth of what I'll call commerce - "fairs" in various European locales; towns; free towns; trading leagues; interruptions via plague, war; amazing outliers such as Italy and - perhaps my favorite - Holland.
I keep thinking that Dierdre McCloskey is onto something with her focus on innovation (and governments that allow it to flourish).
Useful, hard to summarize (in part because there is so much variance by geography even within Europe).
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