This book is a revised and enlarged version of the four George Macaulay Trevelyan Lectures that I had the honor of delivering at Cambridge University in January and February 2005. My heartfelt thanks go to the Faculty of History at Cambridge for the invitation to address them, and in particular to David Abulafia, John Morrill, and Quentin Skinner, who presided over my visit with great kindness and warm hospitality. My thanks, too, to the many Cambridge friends, old and new, whose comments and questions led me to rethink my arguments: above all Simon Goldhill, Lauren Kassell, Scott Mandelbrote, Joan-Pau Rubiés, Ulinka Rublack, and Richard Serjeantson.

My teachers at the University of Chicago, Hanna Gray and Eric Cochrane, introduced me to the artes historicae in the late 1960s, and since then I have had the pleasure of discussing these complex and provocative texts with many friends and colleagues.