In a narrative that reads like a novel, Lauro Martines presents this "rich and fascinating portrait of Girolamo Savonarola" (LATimes), the preacher and political agitator who took center stage in Renaissance Florence after the fall of the Medicis. The Dominican friar is remembered as a dour, puritanical demagogue, who urged his followers to burn their worldly goods in "the bonfire of the vanities." Martines shows this to be a caricature propagated by patricians who feared Savonarola's political reforms, and instead portrays a complex and subtle man and a charismatic leader, whose outspoken vision challenged the established hierarchy and led to his own burning in 1498.

"Martines is one of our most renowned historians of the Italian Renaissance and of Florence in particular. His new book is, in some ways, a successor to April Blood, his account of the 'Pazzi' conspiracy to assassinate Lorenzo de' Medici in 1478. Together the two volumes make up an engrossing study of society and politics during the Tuscan city's most illustrious half century."—Washington Post Book World