Melissa Calaresu and Helen Hills, eds, New Approaches to Naples, c. 1500–c.1800: The Power of Place, Ashgate: Farnham, 2013; 286 pp., 7 colour plates, 38 b/w illus.; 9781409429432, £70.00 (hbk)

It’s a bit like waiting for the bus: you wait twenty-five years for an English-language collection of essays on early modern Naples and then two are published in close succession. In fact, the last such edited volume was Good Government in Spanish Naples, edited by Antonio Calabria and John Marino (New York 1990). If that collection focused on the political, administrative and social structures of the king- dom of Naples, the two recently published volumes show a significant evolution of historiographical concerns among the editors and contributors. They do so in dif- ferent ways. Tommaso Astarita’s Companion to Early Modern Naples (Leiden 2013) was a scholarly tour de force of 500 pages and 20 distinct contributions (including my own, so I must state an interest here) on a vast range of topics. New Approaches to Naples is on a somewhat more modest scale, but is certainly none the worse for that. A few historians have contributed to both volumes, such as Anna Maria Rao and Melissa Calaresu, while the late John Marino was a trait d’union to all three books: an indication of his importance to the field.