Alfonso the Magnanimous (V of Aragon, I of Naples, ca. 1396–1458) is synonymous with Renaissance Naples and the Italian balance of power. Most anglophone students associate him with Ryder's monographs, the triumphal arch at Castel Nuovo (Hersey), that palace's library and school, and with humanists like Panormita, Valla, Pontano, and Facio (Bentley). More recent Italian studies focus on his creation of an early modern state, his projection of maiestas (Cappelli), and his reconfiguration of that state's governance, bureaucracy, and ideology (Senatore, Delle Donne).

Caridi specializes in the early modern Mezzogiorno. This work is part of a series profiling famous historical figures, and he therefore focuses on a detailed political narrative of Alfonso's life. The great virtue of this book is that Caridi places him within the wider historical contexts of the Crown of Aragon and Iberian dynastic conflict, its ever-expanding role in the Mediterranean, and—as ruler of Sicily and Sardinia and adopted heir to Naples—within broader Italian developments. The author skillfully deploys his sources to demonstrate Alfonso's simultaneous ambitions and challenges as he balanced interests in Iberia with those in Italy as part of a larger strategy for enhancing the place of the Trastámara dynasty within Christendom. The king thus successfully played a major role in the Italian balance among Milan, Venice, Florence, and the Papal States. Unlike his Angevin predecessors in Naples, especially the two Giovannas, Alfonso took great advantage of the ongoing papal schism to apply pressure on Rome to secure his claims to Naples. The author makes clear Alfonso's wider perspective as he variously allied or broke relations with the other emerging Italian states and further afield with Burgundy, France, and the empire. Caridi's detailed account also demonstrates Alfonso's patient and long-term policy of gradually winning over the high nobility of the Regno—and the loyalty of Italy's condottieri—to secure and keep his throne. Meanwhile in Iberia, he had to contend with the constantly shifting loyalties and rivalries of his own family's cadet branches in Valencia, Castile, Navarre, Aragon, and Portugal.

Given the restrictions of this series, the reader will find no discussion of sources or methodology, little analysis of Alfonso's intellectual and artistic patronage, and scant discussion of his religious life and values, of his attempts to radically transform Naples's urban plan, or of wider social and economic trends. Caridi does carefully track the hundreds of thousands and millions spent by Alfonso and his rivals on war and diplomacy, vast resources that became available to emerging monarchies. While the author makes ample and skilled use of primary sources—including Iberian ones and diplomatic correspondence—his account is both limited by this adherence to narrative history and lacking in a broader use of other types of work, such as the urban chroniclers most recently analyzed by Senatore, Montuori, De Caprio, and others, which might have broadened his account with a variety of polarities and perspectives.

Despite these limitations—and Caridi's reticence to go beyond the narrative sources—several important themes emerge. Foremost is the question of Alfonso's intentions in seizing the throne of Naples and conducting decades of warfare securing it. While his narrative reinforces claims that Alfonso's long-term goal was to incorporate the Regno into a realm that would include all the Western Mediterranean and then dominate Italy, Caridi agrees with Galasso's arguments that the king sought balance, not hegemony. He also demonstrates how Alfonso's ambitions belied the chivalrous nature of much of the king's declared intentions and behavior. This is not to say that Alfonso acted cynically, but that he reflected a cultural shift in the Quattrocento that gradually replaced feudal, and chivalric, considerations of rule (so well projected by Robert the Wise in the Trecento or by Alfonso's rival René of Anjou) with a new and self-conscious raison d'etat that predated Machiavelli and provided that writer with much of his intellectual context. In this Alfonso well exemplifies Cappelli's analysis of Neapolitan political thought under the Aragonese as the avant-garde of the new nation-state.

Caridi's account is clear and dynamic, granularly detailed, and well documented with endnotes. This volume is an important resource for early modern Neapolitan and broader Mediterranean political history.