{"product_id":"9780226041834","title":"How to Do It: Guides to Good Living for Renaissance Italians","description":"\u003ci\u003eHow to Do It\u003c\/i\u003e shows us sixteenth-century Italy from an entirely new perspective: through manuals which were staples in the households of middlebrow Italians merely trying to lead better lives. Addressing challenges such as how to conceive a boy, the manuals offered suggestions such as tying a tourniquet around your husband's left testicle. Or should you want to goad female desires, throw 90 grubs in a liter of olive oil, let steep in the sun for a week and apply liberally on the male anatomy. Bell's journey through booklets long dismissed by scholars as being of little literary value gives us a refreshing and surprisingly fun social history.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \"Lively and curious reading, particularly in its cascade of anecdote, offered in a breezy, cozy, journalistic style.\" —Lauro Martines, \u003ci\u003eTimes Literary Supplement\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \"[Bell's] fascinating book is a window on a lost world far nearer to our own than we might imagine. . . . How pleasant to read his delightful, informative and often hilarious book.\" —Kate Saunders, \u003ci\u003eThe Independent\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \"An extraordinary work which blends the learned with the frankly bizarre.\" —\u003ci\u003eThe Economist\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \"Professor Bell has a sly sense of humor and an enviably strong stomach. . . . He wants to know how people actually behaved, not how the Church or philosophers or earnest humanists thought they should behave. I loved this book.\" —Christopher Stace, \u003ci\u003eDaily Telegraph\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"University of Chicago Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47120135586032,"sku":"9780226041834","price":26.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780226041834_p0.jpg?v=1769916272","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780226041834","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}