Marin Sanudo's Diaries

Sanudo, Marino, Patricia H. Labalme, and Laura Sanguineti White. Venice, Cità Excelentissima: Selections from the Renaissance Diaries of Marin Sanudo. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.

“No writer will ever make much of modern history who has not seen my diaries, within which is contained every event.” So wrote the Venetian historian Marino Sanudo (or Sanuto) in 1531. This book provides a wide-ranging selection of Sanudo’s large and largely-inaccessible writings in a superbly edited and annotated single volume. For those interested in the early Italian Wars and particularly the circumstances surrounding the shocking (at least to the Venetians) Venetian defeat at Agnadello (1509), this is a useful and interesting book.

From Pavia to Rocroi

Albi de la Cuesta, Julio. De Pavía a Rocroi: los tercios de infantería española en los siglos XVI y XVII. [Madrid]: Balkan Ediciones, 1999.

A very interesting examination of the Spanish tercio from many different standpoints. I haven't had a chance to do more than skim it, but I've already found it quite useful in some respects. The table of contents is posted, so that you can get an idea of the author's coverage of the subject. The glossary particularly, though spare, is useful. There are no footnotes, and the bibliography is keyed to the chapters (not necessarily helpful, but it does at least give an idea of the foundation of the author's thoughts).