Publisher's Synopsis
This edition has been revised, rewritten and expanded. It examines 16th century Europe as a complex, but interconnected whole, and explores the different political structures of Europe, such as the monarchies and city-republics, how they operated and related to one another.;In particular it incorporates the most recent scholarship in this field and emphasizes the increasing importance of town-life in the 16th century, and the economic background of political change.;In includes an entirely new chapter on "social life", taking into account and recent work on demographic history, attitudes to women, the family, and on the impact of education, war and disease, concentrating on the Reformation and the religious and intellectual movements that fuelled it.
