I like books. I have a very considerable number of them, and now that the games have been slashed the books have taken their place as the apartment's major decorative motif. The plurality of them are history books, and then mostly American history (for my sins). The trouble with American history books, at least the scholarly ones, is that they are almost unbearably drab. There seems to be a self-conscious desire to be seen as Scholarly within my part of the profession, a fear of seeming informal, unserious, or even idiosyncratic. Very few have color pictures, are on glossy paper, or frankly have much personality. Many are brilliant, many more are well-argued and coherent, but there's still a sense that we fear not being taken seriously if we let our hair down a little bit.
This is, historically, less of a problem for medieval and early modern (the Renaissance, kind of) studies. Many important, scholarly books by scholarly publishers in these fields border on the sumptuous. One of the most important books about the era, Fernand Braudel's Civilization and Capitalism
A recent book that brought this to mind is Evelyn Welch's Shopping in the Renaissance
I've mentioned before that I used to be a medieval economic historian. What I studied were how legal institutions affected economic institutions and vice-versa. This included things like the evolution of merchant organizations, laws concerning merchants and buyers, the role of the Church and state in amassing and distributing capital, and so on. This was reasonably hot stuff when I first started applying to grad school, but it's since cooled off substantially. Now, the big thing is the experience of mercantile activity, especially the experience of being a consumer. This has a lot to do with our present concerns about consumerism, consumer culture, and so on.
Welch's book is something of a monument in this new kind of economic history. It's rather more restricted than the title implies; it's a two hundred year span (1400-1600) and only in Italy (and hence mostly in central and northern Italy). It also heavily favors the larger urban centers, rather than smaller cities and towns (although they are not entirely neglected). The light is substantially better in these areas than in many others, of course, and thus leads to a richer view of what's going on. Still, I hope one day to read a similar book about the "beer zone" areas (Germany, England, Eastern Europe) as this provides for the "wine zone."
Welch deals with a great many topics, many of which extend rather beyond the purview of economic history, strictly speaking--markets as metaphors, the meaning of shopping, and so on--but have connections to institutional history. She also deals with sensory history--especially the sounds of the marketplace. The market could penetrate every aspect of one's life; I sometimes wonder if this is a little too "modern," but the evidence is good and the argument essentially persuasive.
I have to say that there's one chapter that might be of special interest to gamers: The chapter on auctions, lotteries, and other forms of capital transfer. Just how did auctions work in the renaissance? Did Medici get it right? A clever designer might find something useful in the half-chapter on the prevalence of pawnbroking (often leading to auctions) in renaissance Italy. You might also raise money by essentially raffling off one's things. Often it'd be the state who would be handling the auctions and raffles, even of private goods--if you couldn't pay the taxes, what you had would have to be sold. It was actually considered an act of charity.
What impresses me, as a budding professional in this field, is how deftly she uses a wide array of sources--especially integrating literature and fine art. In my line of work we typically stick close to diaries, letters, and other "low mimetic," un-self-conscious material. The idea/fantasy is that they're less likely to be biased. Sadly, there isn't much art about the occupation of the Mississippi River valley, but as my career progresses I hope to find something with as wide an array of source types, and this is certainly a book to look towards as a model.
This is a good book for anyone interested in consumer culture. It's too easy, and wrong, to draw a line from the goldsmiths of Venice to the wordsmiths of Madison Avenue, but it is useful to demonstrate that there have been consumer cultures before, that they've been qualitatively different from what we have now, and presumably from what we'll have in fifty years. It is written fluidly and well, which combined with its very high production values makes it a pleasure to read, presumably for the non-specialist as well (I may still be too close to a "specialist" to tell).
Very highly recommended. When I was halfway through, I said it's the best history book I'd read in years, and I stand by it at the end of the book.
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