Presents a very detailed account, including the English and European context, of the Lopez Affair, involving Dr. Roderigo Lopez, who gained wealth via international trade and became physician to Queen Elizabeth I. At the same time, he was a spy, with multiple masters, in England and abroad. His downfall and execution on the false charge of attempted regicide stemmed from political rivalry in England. His high status was related to the advantages, such as widespread contacts, that stemmed from his Converso background. Contemporary stereotyped attitudes toward Jews were reflected in Marlowe's "Jew of Malta" and Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice."

In this provocative and wholly absorbing work, Lisa Jardine offers a radical interpretation of the Renaissance, arguing that the creation of culture during that time was inextricably tied to the creation of wealth -- that the expansion of commerce spurred the expansion of thought. As Jardine boldly states, The seeds of our own exuberant multiculturalism and bravura consumerism were planted in the European Renaissance. While Europe's royalty and merchants competed with each other to acquire works of art, vicious commercial battles were being fought over who should control the centers for trade around the globe. Jardine encompasses Renaissance culture from its western borders in Christendom to its eastern reaches in the Islamic Ottoman Empire, bringing this opulent epoch to life in all its material splendor and competitive acquisitiveness. A savvy, street-smart history of the Renaissance.--Dan Cryer, Newsday Jardine's lively book is specific and down-to-earth. A particularly fascinating section recalls how books suddenly ceased to be principally collector's items or aids to scholars and became the sixteenth century's Internet, dispensing fact and fancy to high and low.--The New Yorker