Humanists Alberti, Pico, Bude, and Kepler, all major figures of their time and now major figures in intellectual history, are examined in light of their distinctive ways of reading. Investigating a period of two centuries, Grafton vividly portrays the ways in which book/scholar interactions - and the established traditions that were reflected in these interactions - were part of and helped shape the subjects' humanistic philosophy.

The book also indicates how these traditions have implications for the modern literary scene.

Commerce with the Classics: Ancient Books and Renaissance Readers illustrates the immense variety of humanist readers during the Renaissance. Grafton describes life in the Renaissance library, how the act of reading was shaped by the physical environment, and various folkways of reading during the time. A strong sense of what skilled reading was like in the past is built up through anecdotes, philological analysis, and case studies.

Anthony Grafton's latest work will be of immense interest to Renaissance and intellectual historians and philologists, as well as classicists and a broad range of scholars.