Oct 15: Every student of Florentine history is confronted by these questions: Why was this society so creative, and so receptive to change and innovation? Of all the major Italian cities, why did Florence — and not Milan or Genoa or Venice — achieve the greatest distinction in art and learning during these centuries? (Gene Bruckner)

Oct 23: Does peace, order, and justice reconcile the many to their loss of participation when popular government turns to rule by a prince? In other words, can good government substitute for self-government?

Nov 3: How was Martin Luther, a man that G&W claim “contained within himself most of the strands of thought and passion traversing Europe,” a product of his peculiar time and location ?

Nov 10: What are the implications, both short term and long term, of Martin Luther’s reform movement?

4 Dec: How did Elizabeth manage to avoid religious war and to stay out of the continental wars for so long? And why, after over 25 years of peace, did Spain and England go to war in 1585?

11 Dec: What do Gay&Webb mean by writing “Philip II alienated his northern subjects first of all by what he was, not by what he did… But he soon added the irritant of policy to the accident of birth”  ?