Human Nature in Rural Tuscany An Early Modern History

Melding evolutionary theory and both animal and human ethology together with close, descriptive historical research on a typical Tuscan village in the seventeenth century, Hanlon explains the good reasons individuals had for behaving in ways that now seem strange to us. This fascinating study springs from the conviction that the building blocks of human life are universal: hierarchy and political participation; co-operation and competition, reproduction, invention, and adaptation. The author argues, however, that individual emotions, thought processes, and social predicaments are always set in specific times and places.

Gregory Hanlon is University Research Professor of early modern European history at Dalhousie University. He is the author of  Early Modern Italy 1550-1800: Three Seasons in European History (Palgrave, 2000).