Had the pleasure of reading recently.....

The famous history by Jacob Burkhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy. This is an excellent study of Italian culture between about 1350 and 1550. I begins with Petrarch's brilliance.

  In Petrarch we see a man who was the first person since classical times to ascend to a mountaintop and describe what he experienced. For Petrarch, nature became Nature. Nature took on a beatific and aesthetic quality. It became sublime.

  Also Niccolo Machiavelli's two greatest works The Prince and The Discourses on Livy. Machiavelli's most sincere warnings in both works were his admonitions to avoid the implementation and use of a standing mercenary army. He especially uses the Carthaginian example in this. The mercenary army of Carthage turned against its patron city after its defeat at Zama by the Roman legions of Scipio.