A single volume introduction to the major writers of the Italian Renaissance—Petrarch, Boccaccio, Alberti, della Mirandola, da Vinci, Castiglione, Machiavelli, Buonarroti, Guicciardini, Cellini, and Vasari. Mark Musa is a professor at the Center for Italian Studies at Indiana University. A former Fulbright and Guggenheim Fellow, Musa is the author of a highly acclaimed translation of Dante's Divine Comedy .