There aren’t many academic books that are still worth reading a century after they were first written. Usually, they become outdated, the arguments they address become irrelevant and their conclusions are superseded.

Frederick Lewis Taylor’s The Art of War in Italy 1494-1529 is one of the very few exceptions to this rule. While more recent scholarship has refined and in some cases changed our views of the events during the wars that ended the medieval era and began the modern age, they have not overturned the facts upon which Taylor based his book. Taylor’s arguments are still fundamental to our appraisal of what happened during these wars and his conclusions are still very much worth considering.

It’s also helped by Taylor being an excellent, lively writer, far better than the usual run of academic authors. In fact, as a one-volume introduction to this fiendishly complicated period, there’s few better alternatives.