With Renaissance Lives , Theodore K. Rabb revives a tradition of writing that was often practiced by the historians of that astounding era: to tell the story of an age by examining the lives of those who lived it. Rabb's subjects are all people who felt change gather speed around them: from Titian and Galileo to Catherine de' Medici and John Milton. In their stories we see, above all, the powers of ideas to liberate, to enthrall, to provoke, and to resolve conflict. Renaissance Lives shows us the struggle , with its grave disappointments but also its extraordinary achievements that accompanied the creation of the world we recognize as our own.