In his latest novel, Ross King regales readers with the tale of one of Renaissance Florence’s unsung heroes: Vespasiano da Bisticci. For fifty years, from the 1430s to the 1480s, Vespasiano da Bisticci ran a bookstore beside the Bargello, producing thousands of beautiful illuminated manuscripts for clients such as the Medici and the popes, and penning a gossipy memoir that offers unparalleled insights into Florence’s “golden age.” Ross King recounts the remarkable life of “the king of the world’s booksellers” in “The Bookseller of Florence” – a veritable tribute to one of history’s greatest purveyors of knowledge.