This edited collection, an eightieth birthday present for Adriano Prosperi, borrows its name from the imagery of another great historian, Marc Bloch. As the editors note, Bloch thought that historians should focus not on the acorn (la ghianda), but on the oak tree (la quercia), paying attention to the conditions that shaped it into its current form, one possibility among many. This, they explain, is a fitting concept for a volume in honor of Prosperi's significant impact on the field of early modern history. Contributors received only one parameter: to take inspiration from a historical source they considered significant, though the editors have managed to thematically group their eleven essays in Italian, English, and Spanish. The volume is divided into four sections: “Personal Destinies: Questions of Liberty,” “The World of Knowledge and Communications,” “The Catholic Church and World Horizons,” and “Judgments, Violence, and Enclosure.”

The first section, on questions of liberty, includes three essays. Lucio Biasiori explores the identity formation, mobility, and cultural hybridity of Prospero Imperatore, a formerly enslaved man probably from the Barbary Coast, who ended up condemned as a relapsed heretic for practicing Calvinism. Giuseppe Marcocci, maintaining the thread of Mediterranean slavery, examines the failed manumission case of an enslaved woman called Francisca, demonstrating the difficulties of her ambiguous status as a woman captured illegally from Tunisia, as well as the significant powers of discretion held by the Portuguese court that denied Francisca her freedom. Finally, Wietse de Boer contributes a fascinating essay that at first seems a departure from the first two. It focuses on the suicide of Baldassare Fini, who took his life while in custody of the Inquisition in Modena. This piece makes a compelling intervention in the study of shifting attitudes toward suicide in the early modern period, arguing that Fini conceived of his suicide not as a dishonorable act, but as a way to reclaim his honor and freedom, which was challenged by the Inquisition's case against him for concubinage, usury, and irreverence in church.

Section 2 is less unified in theme. Massimo Donatini's essay explores the mercantile humanism of Giovanni Battista Ramusio of Venice, specifically focused on how he, Girolamo Fracastoro, and Pietro Bembo learned about the Iberian world. It is paired with Marco Cavarzere's essay on Protestant editions of pontifical documents, published to teach Protestants about papal politics and to combat conversions of Protestant princes to Catholicism in the seventeenth century. Section 3 turns to the question of missions and global Catholicism, beginning with two essays on Jesuits by Sabina Pavone and Rafael Gaune Corradi, respectively. Pavone focuses on Claudio Acquaviva's 1605 investigation into the order, the De Detrimentis. Corradi instead looks at underground Jesuits in Chile, arguing for the need to reintegrate them into the history of global Catholicism. Finally, Simon Ditchfield contributes a fascinating global microhistory of the translation (linguistically, materially as image, and conceptually) of Saint Ursula and her eleven thousand virginal companions, arguing that we need to pay special attention to the “physical portability” of Catholicism as a key to its missionary success (128).

The final section, like the second, is less cohesive. Guido dall'Olio examines the use of the concept of “summons to the Valley of Josaphat” (140) by the episcopal tribunal of Bergamo in the sixteenth century, while Vincenzo Lavenia explores concepts of religious violence and literary depictions of Samson in the early modern period. The final contribution of the volume, by Nicholas Terpstra, focuses on the attempts by Cosimo I of Tuscany to enclose both the Jews and the nuns of Siena after his conquest of the city. Terpstra argues for the importance of examining these two disparate groups together, so that we can see how gender, race, and economics influenced their historically intertwined fates.

This volume is to be commended for engaging in many current historiographic trends, exploring issues of race and slavery, globalization, identity, and religious pluralism. It is also a fitting tribute to Adriano Prosperi and his extensive influence on the field. Given its intended personal purpose, as a volume it does not make a major historiographic intervention, but individual essays will likely be of interest to scholars and serve as brief introductions to the broader work of the authors.