Carlo Ginzburg is retired from Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa (Italy). He is the author of numerous books that have been translated into English including The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller.

"No other living historian approaches the range of [Ginzburg's] erudition. Every page of Threads and Traces, his latest work to appear in English, offers an illustration of it." -- Perry Anderson London Review Of Books "Ginzburg's range is remarkable ... rich in references to and insights about diverse historical perspectives." Publishers Weekly "A collection of essays by the profoundly original, intellectually wide-ranging, Italian-Jewish historian Carlo Ginzburg ... an illuminating collection of chapters, deftly translated from the original Italian by Anne C. and John Tedeschi." -- Benjamin Ivry Forward "These essays humanely and generously explore the question of how history ought to be written." -- Jonathan Beckman The Literary Review "Surprising pace, intellectual range, and learned discourse is typical throughout the book... Artfully constructed essays." -- Raymond Grew, University of Michigan Jrnl Of Interdisciplinary History "This is a brilliant text, the product of a scholar of rare breadth and knowledge." -- Ben McDonald, University of Melbourne Melbourne Historical Jrnl

• List of Illustrations Introduction 1. Description and Citation 2. The Conversion of the Jews of Minorca (A.D. 417--418) 3. Montaigne, Cannibals, and Grottoes 4. Proofs and Possibilities: Postscript to Natalie Zemon Davis, The Return of Martin Guerre 5. Paris, 1647: A Dialogue on Fiction and History 6. The Europeans Discover (or Rediscover) the Shamans 7. Tolerance and Commerce: Auerbach Reads Voltaire 8. Anacharsis Interrogates the Natives: A New Reading of an Old Best Seller 9. Following the Tracks of Israel Bertuccio 10. The Bitter Truth: Stendhal's Challenge to Historians 11. Representing the Enemy: On the French Prehistory of the Protocols 12. Just One Witness: The Extermination of the Jews and the Principle of Reality 13. Details, Early Plans, Microanalysis: Thoughts on a Book by Siegfried Kracauer 14. Microhistory: Two or Three Things That I Know about It 15. Witches and Shamans Notes Index