"In his brief, focused chapters, Jack Wills also shows us ordinary life in the world of 1688. We join the great caravans of Muslims on their annual pilgrimage from Damascus and Cairo to Mecca, witness the suicidal exaltation of Russian Old Believers, and walk the pungent streets of Amsterdam. There we enter the Rasp House, where vagrants, beggars, and petty criminals labored to produce powdered brazilwood for the local dyeworks. And we meet hitherto unnoticed but unforgettable characters: Constantine Phaulkon, a Greek adventurer whose efforts to advance French interests as well as his own with the court of Siam ended in betrayal and a grisly death; and Dona Teresa, a beauty at fifteen, whose chaste loves stirred local legend in the wild mining town of Potosi." "Told with verve, color, and insight, Wills's book captures an historical moment in which the world seems both strange and familiar, when the global connections of power, money, and belief were ushering in the modern age."--Jacket.… (more)