"In Safley's skilled hands, Matheus's remarkable memoir enlivens our understanding of the experience of the German bourgeoisie..." - Gary K. Waite, Canadian Journal of History "This well-written book presents an excellent picture of seventeenth-century life and one individual's "bourgeois values." - History: Review of New Books "...he shows a sensitive respect for the self-revealing honesty of this remarkable human document." - Sixteenth Century Journal ...[Safley's] intelligent and sensitive rendering of the ambivalences and complexities in his merchant of Augsburg. -American Historical Review