Florence's iconic foundling home of the Innocenti is often taken as a symbol of Renaissance creativity, innovation, and humanity. The essays in Lost and Found explore new dimensions and contexts for foundling care at the Innocenti and use archival documents and digital tools to locate it architecturally, geographically, and socially.

Sarah Bilston unfolds the story of orchid mania, the nineteenth-century craze among European and North American collectors vying to own the world’s most coveted flowers. Focusing the hunt for the so-called lost orchid, an especially vaunted flower native to Brazil, Bilston reveals the enormous human and environmental cost of a colonial obsession.

In Lost Tongues of the Red River, John D. Phan uncovers the history of a Sinitic language rooted in the Red River Plain of northern Vietnam, which he calls “Annamese Middle Chinese.” The life and death of this language stimulated dramatic speech transformations in the region, giving rise to a new language in the early second millennium—Vietnamese.

In this history of 20th-century technology, Slade explains how disposability was a necessary condition for America’s rejection of tradition and our acceptance of change and impermanence. But by choosing to support ever-shorter product lives, he argues, we may well be shortening the future of our way of life.

In 1932 Sigmund Freud and diplomat William Bullitt completed a well-informed psychobiography of Woodrow Wilson, inspired by his irrational handling of the Treaty of Versailles. Released decades later in redacted form, the book was panned by critics and immediately forgotten. Patrick Weil resurrects the original version and reassesses its insights.

In 1932 Sigmund Freud and diplomat William Bullitt completed a well-informed psychobiography of Woodrow Wilson, inspired by his irrational handling of the Treaty of Versailles. Released decades later in redacted form, the book was panned by critics and immediately forgotten. Patrick Weil resurrects the original version and reassesses its insights.

Colonial Americans were enamored with the rich colors and silky surface of mahogany. As this exotic wood became fashionable, demand for it set in motion a dark, hidden story of human and environmental exploitation. Anderson traces the path from source to sale, revealing how prosperity and desire shaped not just people’s lives but the natural world.

The Major Declamations, attributed to Quintilian in antiquity, exemplify the final stage of Greco-Roman rhetorical training, in which students delivered speeches for the prosecution and defense at imaginary trials. A wide variety of fascinating ethical, social, and legal details animate the fictional world conjured up by these oratorical exercises.

Drawing on cognitive psychology and other fields, Make It Stick offers techniques for becoming more productive learners, and cautions against study habits and practice routines that turn out to be counterproductive. The book speaks to students, teachers, trainers, athletes, and all those interested in lifelong learning and self-improvement.