Our age—every age—needs better manners. That no one should “boast of his nobility, his titles, his riches, least of all his intelligence” is as relevant today as it was in the sixteenth century, when Giovanni Della Casa wished to improve the behavior of his fellow Florentines. Our free e-book for December, Galateo: Or, The Rules of Polite Behavior, circulated widely in early modern Europe and was quickly translated into other languages—Shakespeare may have read the first English translation. Della Casa is by turns acerbic, graphic, and hilarious; he was perhaps the first to recognize certain universals in human society, such as, “the less one’s natural musical talent, the more one sings.”
“Galateo holds an important place in the long and rich history of etiquette books.”—Judith Martin, New York Times Book Review
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