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Comment by Sydni Moser on November 20, 2011 at 12:41pm

Comment by Sydni Moser on August 23, 2011 at 3:50pm

I went to the Sterling Forest Renaissance Fair last weekend and wore a very tight corset all day.  Whew, my ribs hurt when I took it off, but no way did it indent my waist to the degree pictured above.  Women were also much smaller in stature way back in the Renaissance.

Comment by R. F. Boldt on March 8, 2011 at 3:21am

A World Lit Only By Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance – Portrait of an Age
By William Manchester

This book concerns the period from roughly 400 AD to the completion of the round-the-world voyage begun by Magellan and completed around 1520, together with some following discussion of the impact of the voyage on science and religion. Both the Dark Ages and the Renaissance are treated. It has 320 pages divided into three chapters, the last of which is devoted to Magellan. The first two chapters, hence a couple of hundred pages, are devoted to the portrait of the age, the science, the composers, the artists, the writers, the religious figures. I found this book in a list of references in Sam Harris’ “Letter to a Christian Nation” so figured there would be no whitewashing of characters, and there isn’t. I felt I was getting a comprehensive, if not detailed, picture of the times and places. More than any other author I’ve read, Manchester gives a picture the life of the common man. It is graphic and it makes me glad I live now instead of then. The book goes for about $10.