Katalin Prajda's Network and Migration in Early Renaissance Florence, 1378–1433 is an argument for the importance of social networks among elite Florentine men into the fifteenth century. It focuses on the network of the Scolari family as they built their fortune and standing in Florence by establishing themselves in the Kingdom of Hungary. Prajda relies on an incredible depth and variety of sources, both Italian and Hungarian, to detail the shape and functioning of this elite Florentine network as representative of contemporary Florentine social norms and as shaped by the centralized monarchy of Hungary.

As Prajda demonstrates in chapter 1, Florentines abroad relied on a rich network of their compatriots and the ties that those compatriots had formed in local areas. She argues that the networks themselves were perhaps the most valuable asset that the Florentines had, and they cultivated them carefully. The Scolari, at the center of Prajda's study and the focus of chapter 2, built, used, and supported such networks as they simultaneously established themselves in Hungary and raised their status in Florence. Brothers Pippo and Matteo travelled to Buda around 1380 to apprentice in a Florentine firm. They then worked for the archbishop and finally for the king in an administrative capacity. Pippo earned Hungarian noble titles and married the daughter of a wealthy Hungarian noble; Matteo eventually returned to Florence, married an elite Florentine, and bought properties in Florence. A third member of he family, Andrea, was selected in 1405 to serve as the bishop of Zagreb, an important local trading hub, and eventually of Varadinum, near an area governed by his cousin and housing the salt chambers that were an important resource for trade, almost certainly at Pippo's urging. While in office, Andrea also engaged in trade himself and turned his bishop's palace into a center of the Florentine community.

Chapters 3 through 5 focus on increasingly wide circles of the network surrounding the Scolari family. Chapter 3 examines ties of kinship between the Scolari and other men. This includes kinship through marriage, which Prajda argues continued to be factor in business relationships into the early 1400s. Chapter 4 expands the circle to friends of business, elite Florentine men who appeared in legal documents drawn up for the Scolari in Hungary and who shared close business ties with them. Finally, chapter 5 explores connections between the Scolari and various artisans, all of whom were connected to the Scolari in multiple ways demonstrating the ways that artisans would participate in elite networks. Of particular interest in chapter 5 is the section on Manetto di Jacopo Amannatini, the Fat Woodcarver of Antonio Manetti's tale, who served the Scolari for years as a woodcarver and architect. One overwhelming feature of these chapters is the variety of ways in which any two individuals were connected to one another.

In each of these three chapters, Prajda focuses on individuals. Her portraits are meticulous and rounded, drawing on genealogies, guild records, government documents, and census materials, to name only a few, located in Florence, Hungary, and points in between. She looks at numerous status markers, a multitude of economic information, and possible associations through neighborhood or guild associations. These sketches of the individuals and their ties demonstrate the confusing, inconsistent, and hard-to-trace nature of Florentine alliances, as well as the depth of the Florentine archives and the detail that a dedicated and clever historian can extract from them.

Prajda is as deeply familiar with the Hungarian sources and historiography as she is with Italian materials. As she makes clear, Hungary was a thriving economy, a complex centralized state, and an increasingly important ally in peninsular politics. But while Florentine fortunes and reputations could be made in Hungary, it is ultimately the Florentines who are her subject. Her contribution is bringing to light the extensive networks of Florentines in general, of those tied to Hungary in particular, and pointing her audience to the extensive historiography already in existence on the medieval Kingdom of Hungary. As such, Network and Migration is a vital addition to the literature on Italian social, business, and political networks and the movement of Florentines abroad.