"The Fat Woodworker" is a delightful story in the tradition of the Italian Renaissance "beffe," stories of practical, often cruel jokes. It is the tale of a prank engineered by the great Renaissance architect, Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446), played upon an unsuspecting (and perhaps less-than-brilliant) friend and woodworker named Manetto, in reprisal for the woodworkers social slight. While the prank is indeed cruel, it is so ingenious, and the victim is so comical, that the reader soon forgets the architects - and the authors - malice and settles in for a delightful turn as part of the...