This book describes the introduction of printing in Perugia and the cultural and political context in which it took place, over a period from 1471 to 1559. In 1471, the first company with the purpose of producing printed books was established in the city. In 1559, Perugia had definitively lost political autonomy, and in the same year, the Index Librorum Prohibitorum was published.

In Perugia, as in Rome and other places in Italy between 1465 and 1471, printing was introduced through the expertise of German typographers associated with local investors. Their cultural and business horizon was Perugia University, which enjoyed great prestige for legal studies, attracting a community of talented students of German origin.

The first part of the book (chapters 1–4) deals with the early German typographers. Most prominent were Petrus Petri, from Cologne, and Steffen Arndes, who became one of the great university publishers in Lübeck, after spending the years 1481–82 in Perugia. Petrus Petri was closely connected to the academic milieu, where German students and professionals enlivened a cultural community constantly on the move between Perugia and Rome. He was associated with the first printing company created in Perugia in 1471, backed by political and financial support from the Baglioni family, who played a leading role in the city politics. His activity as a printer lasted until 1482, when printing businesses in Perugia surrendered to competing booksellers from Venice. The city on the lagoon had by that time grown to a prominent position as a book trade center in Italy and in Europe.

The second part of the book (chapters 5–7) explores the book trade in Perugia, highlighting its complexity. Printing was reintroduced in 1499, thanks to Francesco di Baldassarre, son of a former associate of Petrus Petri. Connected by training and relationships to the Venetian book milieu, printing was to him only part of a more general activity as a publisher. He took on the name Francesco Cartolari and grew to become the main publisher in the city, enjoying the protection of the Baglioni family, which extended to his heirs. In sixteenth-century Perugia, publishing also involved a number of other book entrepreneurs, in a market encompassing a wide range of books and printed products. However, the decline of the Baglioni family and the downgrading of the city to a district under papal rule implied, by 1559, a downgrading of their activity.

Perugia is a significant case study. It allows for glimpses of the transition in producing university textbooks from the medieval system based on pecia to a new system based on printing. In addition, it sheds light on many aspects of the history of the book trade in Italy in its factual development, since printing and publishing are connected to a lively and widely renowned academic tradition, which is especially relevant from the fourteenth to the mid-sixteenth century. This is why it has attracted the attention of researchers since the early nineteenth century, at the local and later at the national level.

Alessandra Panzanelli builds her work on past work, renovating prior research through a systematic and sharply original approach based on the accurate cataloging and direct examination of the books produced in Perugia in the years 1471–1559 and the complete rereading of all the archival sources listed by previous researchers. She explores relationships between different actors in printing and publishing companies and describes the book trade in Perugia in its economic dimension and political implications and context. Examination of printing equipment and its circulation allows for the resolution of some and speculation about other controversial issues, and on the connection of the early Perugia and Rome printers with Gutenberg's technical legacy. Moreover, in Perugia it is also possible to see at work the inner functioning of Venice's influence on the book trade in the peninsula.

The final part of the book is a very large appendix, including a rich apparatus of illustrations; a systematic list of archival sources; the complete catalogue of books printed in Perugia in 1471–1559, fully described and arranged by printer in chronological order; and an exhaustive bibliography followed by an accurate index.