Liberty, virtue, and progress Book

An economic history written by a cultural specialist. The book's thesis is hardly new and really doesn't hold up in the direction that Jardine takes it. Plenty of very smart people have already pointed out that a capitalist economy existed in Europe well before the spread of humanism, and the economy was actually in a state of serious decline by the time the new culture started to take hold, so it's hard to argue that economics trumps culture in the case of the Renaissance. Something more than capitalism took place in Europe during that period. Kind of a silly book, and not a very interesting read.