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The man stood up and stretched his back, aching from a long day of sitting and stooping

over pages of cramped hand writing.

He plucked his hat off the desk and plopped it down on top of his head, then walked out

toward the door, leaving behind the cacophonous clamor of a working print shop.

Inkers slamming their ink balls onto trays of type, compositors clacking metal pieces

of type into the form, papers crinkling voices calling out corrections and instructions.

Enough of this thought the man, hollering for an assistant to follow him with a crate

of completed volumes.

The two men stepped out into the heat of the Venetian summer, grateful for a brief moment

of respite as they passed under the shade from the spire of their parish church.

It was July of 1499.

The man's name was Aldus Minuteus.

He was a scholar and a printer, somewhat famous among his contemporaries, and Venice

had been his home for the last decade.

He picked his way through the narrow lanes and winding byways of the city on his way

to the booksellers, yelling at his sweating assistant to keep up with the crate.

He passed swaggering condo tieri, scar-faced mercenaries waiting to ship out to garrison

some bleak Greek fortress town against the relentless advance of the Ottoman Turks.

The assistant, struggling to see over the crate, bumped into a rotund, richly dressed

German, a visiting outspirg merchant who cursed him in a barely-accented Venetian

...