Incorporating the latest developments in the study of the period, a team of leading international scholars provides a fresh and dynamic picture of a period of great transformation in the political, cultural, and economic life of the Italian peninsula, which witnessed the rise of autonomous city states in the north, the creation of a powerful kingdom in the south, and the development of the Italian language as a vehicle for literary expression.About the Author: David Abulafia is Professor of Mediterranean History at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College. He has published widely on the history of the Mediterranean from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries.