Table of Contents
Prologue: Winter Landscape 5
Life without Money 18
The Great Experiment 20
"God Has Abandoned Us": Europe, 1570-1600
A Monk on the Run 26
God's Wind and Waves 32
Harsh Frosts and Burning Sun 35
A Time of Confusion and a Fiery Mountain 40
Pilgrims and Their Hunger 44
Truth and Wine 45
Wine in Vienna 48
The Lights Go Out 51
Witches and Spoiled Harvests 55
The Truth in the Stars 62
Doctor Faustus 67
Infinite Worlds 72
The Tower of Books 74
The Age Of Iron
Hortus Botanicus 83
Revolutionary Places 88
The City Devours Its Children 93
The Magic of Green Cheese 97
The Great Transformation 101
A Picture of the World 109
Idle Talk and Fabrications 117
A Warning and a Call to Repent 119
Tears Too Plentiful to Count 121
The Revolution of the Barrel of a Musket 126
Sell More to Strangers 131
The State as Machine 136
A Profitable Trade 139
The Curse of Silver 144
Officer, Retired 147
The Subversive Republic of Letters 158
Germanus incredibilis 170
Virtue in the Drowning Cell 174
Leviathan 179
An Inventory of Morality 181
On Comets And Other Celestial Lights
The Madness of Crowds 185
The Antichrist 200
The Messiah and the Whore 219
The Fair on the Ice 225
The Face of Change 229
The Price of Change 233
Tapissier du roi 237
The Public Sphere and the Vices of Bees 240
The Floating Reverend 245
Epilogue: Supplement to The Fable of the Bees
Songbirds, Wood Lice, and Corals 255
Freedom and Luxury 260
Inherited Compromises 265
New Metaphors 270
The Theology of the Market 272
The Market and the Fortress 277
Acknowledgments 285
Notes 287
Bibliography 293
Illustration Credits 315
Index 317