After starting amid the horse-trading and blatant bribery of the College of Cardinals’ conclave that elected Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia (1431–1503) as Pope Alexander VI in 1492, Paul Strathern goes back to Rodrigo’s early years in Xàtiva, near Valencia in the Kingdom of Aragon. He follows Borgia from Spain and describes his rise to power, his reign in the Vatican and the fortunes of his offspring, Cesare and Lucretia, in a new portrait and assessment of Renaissance Italy’s most infamous family.