Sleepwalking into a New World: The Emergence of Italian City Communes in the Twelfth Century

"A fresh look into how communes in the mid-12th century successfully prepared Italian power structures for the cultural significance they would later have." —Publishers Weekly

Amid the disintegration of the Kingdom of Italy in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, a new form of collective government—the commune—arose in the cities of northern and central Italy. Sleepwalking into a New World takes a bold new look at how these autonomous city-states came about, and fundamentally alters our under...