Located just 10 miles from Florence and integrated into that city's economy, the small 14th-century Italian town of Prato lived mostly in the shadow of its larger neighbour. Its merchants and small businessmen and women would be forgotten today but for the survival of an unusual number of documents from Prato - detailed account books that preserve line-by-line records of long-ago business transactions. Based on these sources, Richard K. Marshall seeks to throw light on the everyday business life of Renaissance Italy.