The author's subject is the history of Pisa's urban development from the middle of the thirteenth to the beginning of the fourteenth century, the period of the city's most rapid growth. After describing in detail his primary source of information, the notarial chartulary, Herlihy devotes chapters to significant aspects of his subject: geography, demography, politics, taxation, communication, agriculture, commerce, industry, and the social structure. A series of appendixes illustrate various problems (for example, population, prices, business contracts) discussed in the text with material collected from Pisan archives. The book also contains a serviceable bibliography and an informative note on the sources. -- Cambridge University Press; Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/2114990.