Inventing the Renaissance: The Myth of a Golden Age

by Ada Palmer

An irreverent new take on the Renaissance, which reveals it as anything but Europe's golden age.

From the darkness of a plagued and war-torn Middle Ages, the Renaissance (we're told) heralds the dawning of a new world--a halcyon age of art, prosperity, and rebirth. Hogwash! or so says award-winning novelist and historian Ada Palmer. In Inventing the Renaissance, Palmer turns her witty and irreverent eye on the fantasies we've told ourselves about Europe's not-so-golden age, myths she sets right with sharp clarity.

Palmer's Renaissance is altogether desperate. Troubled by centuries of conflict, she argues, Europe looked to a long-lost Roman Empire (even its education practices) to save them from unending war. Later historians met their own political challenges with a similarly nostalgic vision, only now they looked to the Renaissance and told a partial story. To right this wrong, Palmer offers fifteen provocative portraits of Renaissance men and women (some famous, some obscure) whose lives reveal a far more diverse, fragile, and wild Renaissance than its glowing reputation suggests.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Art, Renaissance, European History, Audiobook, Italy

768 pages, Hardcover

First published February 13, 2025

Reviews

[Tim O'Neill · Rating 5 out of 5]

I haven't had this much fun reading a history book in many years. It is chatty, witty, often laugh out loud funny, but with vivid and engaging prose that has a real desire on the part of the writer for the readers to understand,/i> the subject, and in an in-depth and multilayered way. Motivated in part by several very simplistic journaist think pieces during the pandemic that went from "the Renaissance was triggered by the Black Death" to "so maybe we are about to see a new Renaissance", Palmer takes the reader through the very modern and recent origins of the concept of "the Renaissance" and shows it is, in many ways, something of a myth. She then spends most of the rest of her substantial book deconstructing what the term attempts to encompass and to examine what was happening in the periods (plural) and cultures (also plural) it generally refers to that made it both similar to and also distinct from what went before.

In the process she debunks a lot of pop history concepts and common understandings, such as the Middle Ages as "a dark age" or the Renassaince (however you delineate and define it) as "a golden age" - explaining why those terms are not accurate and not even very useful. How secular the Renaissance was and how much it led to secularism, whether it saw a rise in individualism, whether it was the birth of capitalism and whether any of the other posited "x factors" that supposedly definte the Renaissance are valid are also explored at length and in enjoyable detail.

And this is fundamentally an enjoyable book; I imagine Dr Palmer's university classes are a lot of fun. The author peppers her analysis with vivid anecdotes, amusing trivia and running jokes, several of which serve as ways to remind the reader later in what is a fairly long book of something explained at the beginning. So the parrot that speaks Latin, the man with three testicles and Battle Popes One and Two are funny, but also useful to that understanding that the author seeks to instill.

This is a great book and an remarkable debut as a popular history writer by a vigorous scholar who is clearly a superb teacher. I look forward to her next book. Highly recommended.

[John Gossman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb history. For those intimidated by its length, let me point out it has 100 pages of notes and references. Yes, that means it is still 650 pages, but it is clear, enjoyable reading: I finished it in 3 days. Part of the reason for the length is that Palmer repeats herself. She also uses a lot of asides and parentheticals. But these have an important function, by repeating information and annotating it she makes it easier to remember. I suspect Palmer is a superb teacher. One example of this is how she gives nicknames, often comic, to the historical figures. For example, rather than just list off a series of popes, she writes, “he was kept in that tedious but important office by Pius II (Scholar-Pope), Paul II (reclusive Venetian), Sixtus IV (Battle Pope!), and Innocent VIII (King Log).”
While this may seem irreverent or distracting (as well as expanding the text), these serve as mnemonics, especially valuable when so many names are repeated (various Medicis, Sforzas, Borgias, and endless Giovannis). I’ve read a lot of Renaissance history and this book has really helped straighten some of these figures out in my head: I will surely never forget Julius II (Battle Pope II) again.

Palmer is a great stylist (in her fiction too) and uses that style in service of teaching, but occasionally goes wrong. Her chapter on Lucretia Borgia was very difficult for me, partly because she chose to write it in second person (using “you” as if the reader were Borgia). Since in other chapters she often addresses the reader directly as “you” and sometimes uses “you” as an indefinite pronoun, this added to my cognitive load unnecessarily. Fortunately, this conceit is restricted to that single chapter. And though I thought overall the sprawl of the text was helpful for context and perspective, the book probably could have been edited down slightly without losing anything. Still, a masterpiece.

Finally, Palmer provides a wealth of references, mostly to recent, accessible books. If you like the Renaissance and read this book, be prepared to buy a bunch more books.

[kay · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was long so I'll keep it short. This is how you write history nonfiction. There wasn't a dull moment, or a section I couldn't wait to get through, whether it was about people, events, ideas or concepts. It was fun, broad and yet easy to follow, and wonderfully supplemented the mind numbing renaissance art history class I just took. No notes, I hope Palmer writes a book for every topic I'm interested in.

Thank you to Head of Zeus and NetGalley for this ARC.

[Bas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ada Palmer has created here a very solid and readable introduction to the Renaissance. It introduces the reader to some of the most interesting characters from that period as to most important characteristics. At the same time she very well let's us question the idea of the 'Renaissance' and how it contains very contradictory elements and is always given form by the biases of later generations who want to project their issues on that time period. I think a reader will come out of this book both more knowledgeable about the time period as more skeptical about popular conceptions of time period and aware of one's biases. ( And Ada Palmer very much concedes she herself has also those).

Palmer's writing is very readable and funny ( there are some great humorous passages in this book) and not at all academical. Palmer is also very much present in the book with examples and personal experiences that she shares. This is not a non-fiction were the author is almost invisible. I do have some criticisms of the book. One is very much one of taste. Ada Palmer is very much a historian of Ideas and that shows in this book ( what is humanism, what is atheism, what did obscure writer x thought about y,...) , material aspects of the Renaissance world get much less attention ( again something she herself concedes). There is nothing wrong with that but my interests don't completely align with Palmer.

A bigger issue is the fact that this is still a very dense book at times , with a lot of different names. I'm reasonable familiar with the period and know a lot of those and even I was drowning at times. I can imagine that it would be much for people who have less background. Palmer does really try to make it accessible but sometimes she errs in the other way by repetition of certain information which makes it tedious. But generally I really enjoyed the book and I would recommend it if people want to learn more about the period.

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Inventing the Renaissance does something magical: it manages to take a tightly-held conviction (that there was a thing in European history called “the Renaissance”), dismantle it with humor and intelligence, then put it back together as something different and more true to the past itself. But maybe more importantly, Palmer’s expertise and storytelling here helps us better understand how golden ages are imagined, and why rejecting those invented constructions of the past provides us with hope as we confront our own contemporary world. As she says herself: “we can do better than the Renaissance.”

[Nel · Rating 3 out of 5]

This rating reflects my personal experience with this book rather than its quality.
I'm sure it's a great book, especially for someone academically inclined, but I cared naught for that particular discussion of humanism (part 4) and whatever was going on in part 5 & 6, either - I'm just here for the anecdotes, really, and Donatello with his cute gay boyfriend (I mean, girl, all I'm saying...you can't just drop this and not show the receipts), but I did enjoy part 1 & 2, especially the chapter on patronage.
Oh and Medici's balls.
The mystery of those balls will haunt me forever.

[Adam McPhee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Liked this, once I got used to the informal tone. It's a bit grating at first, especially the lulzy internet speak, but I have to admit I found myself able to fly through it, and it also does a good job of keeping all the repetitious dynastic names comprehensible to the reader. The mini-biographies are well-written.

I do have one big issue and a few minor ones on the Lucrezia Borgia chapter. The big issue: the author talks about the well-known debate Isabella d'Este had over who was the better fictional knight, Rinaldo or Orlando, suggesting this was spurred by Ariosto sharing the first chapters (ahem, cantos) of his Orlando Furioso. This is preposterous. Ariosto was seventeen in 1491, still a law student. Isabella might have/probably knew Ariosto, maybe even knew him as a poet (at that point he'd written some latin poetry and a student play that's since been lost), but the OF was still years away. We know this because he had another, earlier chivalric epic that he started working on but abandoned, at around the turn of the century. The first known reference to the OF isn't until 1507, when Ariosto is sent on embassy to congratulate Isabella on the birth of her (third?) son, and in her thank-you letter, Isabella mentions the poem. Isabella's debate was more likely spurred by Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato, of which she was a huge fan, writing him to ask for a third book. She also would have known the characters from, among other things, Cieco's Mambriano and possibly Luigi Pulci's Morgante.

Minor quibbles: the author writes, "Ferrante sided with Giulio, demanding that (Alfonso), as duke, punish Ippolito, but Alfonso and Ippolito were close (having grown up together while Ferrante grew up in Naples) so Alfonso refused." Alfonso and Ippolito worked together and became close, but this actually came as a surprise to Ferrara-watchers, as in childhood the two did not always get along, with Ippolito being much closer to Giulio and Sigismondo. Also, the author seems to have forgotten that Ippolito spent a big portion of his childhood in Hungary, where he was educated.

"You (Palmer is writing in the second person, she means Lucrezia, it's a nice touch) bore Alfonso more children in these years: Alessandro, Eleonora, Francesco, then more miscarriages. You were in your thirties now—an age at which many wives in political marriages find their husbands’ attentions moving to younger concubines—but from 1513 on Alfonso started keeping you continually pregnant, even though you already had healthy sons, almost as if… Almost as if he wants you to die in childbirth? Of course there can’t be direct evidence. It was certainly unusual in the period for Alfonso to keep you pregnant so much, despite not liking you very much, but why? Was he trying to kill you? Was he just that lustful? Were you just that lustful? Insatiable? Implausibly fertile? This is exactly the kind of moralistic speculation historians will make about both you and everyone around you for centuries to come, tipping your portrait back and forth between villainous femme fatale and tragic heroine."

I don't really take issue with this one (though possibly the author might be slightly conflating Alfonso d'Este with Alfonso II d'Este, of My Last Duchess Fame). The author is entitled to her opinion, but since the book is about how there are so many different renaissances, I just thought I would offer mine. In short, Alfonso was humiliated in his first marriage, and again to a lesser extent by Lucrezia in their early years. Lucrezia's experience with men was even worse than Alfonso's with women, far worse. So the marriage got off to a rocky start, more performative than loving, with both doing their duty (three times on the wedding night, as per Sarah Bradford) but not investing too much in it emotionally. But the wars against first Venice and then Julius II made them realize they had to rely on each other, and both turned out to be capable leaders with unlikely qualities, and my read is that this brought them together. Sadly, for Lucrezia, this meant a lot of troubling pregnancies. But it's important to note that Alfonso didn't replace her in the way he was expected to. That is, by entering into another dynastic marriage with another elite family. Instead, after LB died he took up with the daughter of a hat-maker and lived contentedly with her for the rest of his life, possibly marrying her. Yes, Alfonso loved brothels and prostitutes when he was young, but I suspect that left him as he aged, and that he was looking for a more grounded, emotional love. And now that I think about it, Alfonso would've been justified in finding a new wife anytime after the Borgia family network collapsed, but he didn't, did he? I think there was something there.

Still, my take is but one among many.

[Alex Sarll]

Ada Palmer's Terra Ignota series is probably my favourite fiction published this century, and one of my standard descriptions is that it's science fiction as written by a historian, someone who understands the second- and third- order consequences of change, and the strange switchback paths the world takes. Well, here's her first public-facing work of history, and it demonstrates that same encyclopaedic knowledge and ability to deploy it to spark new epiphanies in the reader. Ever wondered how melons were responsible for the French Revolution? Almost certainly not, but the answer is here, along with dozens of similarly improbable but persuasive insights. And if you object that the French Revolution was hardly the Renaissance, then that's part of the point; there's vast erudition on display here, but as the title suggests, this is a work of historiography as much as history, the story not just of the Renaissance but of the stories different people and ages have told of the Renaissance, from Petrarch encapsulating the first stirrings to the various (mis)conceptions of it down to the present. Or almost the present, anyway; Palmer's conclusion is a rallying cry for a tattered, bloodied, roundabout yet still forward-facing notion of progress:
"Plague wasn't the Horseman of the Apocalypse Petrarch hoped to defeat, but the man whose Remedies Against Fortune offered consolation, even for those who lose their homeland to war, would weep such happy tears to hear the plague for which he had no consolation is defeatable."

Agreed, but then what would he do when you told him that the most powerful, scientifically advanced nation on Earth had, since the completion of this book, decided to turn its back on those miraculous remedies? So that sense of disconnect, that even history seen as two steps forward, one step back no longer feels believable, was one reason that I couldn't quite love Inventing The Renaissance as I do Terra Ignota. The other was the style. Because of reasons, the novels are mostly narrated in a gorgeous 21st century attempt at a 25th century pastiche of Enlightenment prose, a project which made perfect sense on its own terms, but at whose genesis I think I see further hints here in the hilarious sections detailing Palmer's bemused glee at Renaissance humanists'* rediscovery of classical Latin, and the terrible contortions they put it through. Now, I'd read articles before I read the novels, so on some level I knew she doesn't always write like that, even aside from the fact that obviously, nobody always writes like that. But even so, I wasn't prepared for the determined accessibility, sometimes shading into mateyness, with which sections of this are presented. Among (many) other things, Inventing The Renaissance doubles as an intellectual autobiography, and along with the Attenborough-style glimpses of never-before-recorded group behaviours of Renaissance studies academics, there's a keen sense of just how brilliant it must be to get Palmer as a lecturer, even before you consider the awesomeness of her famed papal conclave LARP. And spoken, I imagine her love of a good sobriquet is a boon for keeping the various bearers of repeating names in early modern Italy straight**. But on the page, I confess that the increasingly convoluted variations on Julius II: Battle Pope 2 did start to grate. In places it felt less like Terra Ignota, more like Tumblr posts about Terra Ignota. And there are some excellent Tumblr posts about Terra Ignota, don't get me wrong; I just never imagined there was quite so much of Palmer in $niper.

All of which said, I can forgive a lot in any historian who can, for a brief moment, make me feel like I've almost understood the Italian Wars – and who then makes clear that they're not expecting me to remember it all, because they certainly can't (see also Barbara Tuchman). Palmer is especially good on the League of Cambrai debacle, "a war in which every single participant changed sides, some several times." And if there can sometimes be an echo of those galaxy brain memes that return to the initial statement, coming out of 600+ pages only to conclude, like Bart Simpson, that "in summary, the Renaissance was an age of contrasts", well, the statement definitely feels deepened by the journey. Even just the section which returns to Palmer's dissertation topic and asks whether Machiavelli was an atheist – but more than that, why people get so invested in whether Machiavelli was an atheist, and expands from there to the whole misbegotten human urge to see the past as the present in different hats – would be worth the price of admission on its own. Hell, I emerge from this prepared to concede that Savonarola might, just perhaps, not be quite the blister I have always understood him to be, and there are precious few writers who can shake me on something as foundational as that.

*This word gets a lot of poking and prodding, but I'm not going to try teaching my predictive her preferred variant for one use, legitimate though it is.
**"It could be worse; I know scholars who work on a phase in seventeenth century Iceland when 40 percent of all men were named Jón Jónson."

(Edelweiss ARC)

[Rachel Ashera Rosen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish Goodreads' ratings went above 5 stars for this one. Infinity stars. My God. This book is a goddamn triumph, not just as an accessible history of the Renaissance but a look at how our understanding of history is constructed. It interweaves learnings from multiple disciplines—political science, history, art, economics, archaeology, and so on, and also LARP and fishtank maintenance—to paint a brilliant and multifaceted portrait of the people, ideologies, and movements that built the Renaissance, and explains why the beginning, end, and significance of the era is so difficult to pin down.

It's also really emotional in a way that deserves celebration. Rarely does any nonfiction work make me openly weep and this did in multiple places. It's the work of an author who loves her subject. I also love her subject but this somehow made me even more excited and invested in the Renaissance than I already was. I am babbling. I got it out from the library in brick form because that what was available but I think I'll buy it in ebook so that I have a searchable version.

[William Collen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Review published in WOLRD magazine here: https://wng.org/articles/reexamining-...

[Griffin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Both a very informative, accessible history of this conceptually unwieldy period and a valuable meditation on history-making in general.

[Silver · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tagantjärele tuli tahtmine täpsustada.

See on kõige parem ajalooraamat mis kunagi kirjutatud.

Kui paljudes akadeemilistes tekstides saab lugeda asju nagu "wtf" ja "srsly" ja lehekülgede kaupa koomilist väljamõeldud dialoogi?

Ada Palmer on parim.

[Ben Eustis-Guthrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

If I had read this book in the 8th grade instead of Michio Kaku and Brian Greene "pop physics" books, there's a good chance I would be doing a history PhD right now instead of a physics PhD.

For context, I took the author's "Italian Renaissance" history class when I was in college (more specifically, the famed Fall 2016 run of the class she references in the final chapters of the book!). She got a spontaneous round of applause after the first day of class. She's that freaking good. She's truly in a league of her own when it comes to lecturing, and that comes through on every page of the book.

This book has three big goals, as best as I can tell, which it achieves masterfully:

1) The narratives we tell about the past say as much about the present as it does about the past. (The Renaissance was about rising nationalism! No, it was about civic participation and city-state republics! No, it was about the decline of faith and the rise of reason!).

2) The past is much more complex than we can ever capture with tidy narratives. The kind of Lorenzo de Medici who helped create the kind of Florence that was full of scholars that many moderns hope were closet atheists (no, they weren't) was not the only story of Florence. It was also the city that, a generation later, took great steps to being what we would recognize as a modern republic, and it also paid great heed to the supposed prophecies of charismatic nuns and elected Jesus Christ as the eternal king of Florence. (That statement is an "and" kind of statement, not a "but" kind of statement). Guess which part of the story usually makes it into the grand narratives we tell?

3) What truly made the Renaissance a distinct age was not art, or scholarships, or merchants, or princes. All those were continuous with the Middle Ages (which were not the Dark Ages!). It was that, for the first time, the artists and scholars and merchants and princes were consciously shaping their efforts to create a new golden age. They failed to create the kind of golden age they hoped for. Instead, they (eventually) created us, and the project is still ongoing. The book ends with a stirring "call to arms" to further the project of creating as-yet-unimagined golden ages with ten times the charisma of any other history book I've ever read. Petrarch's "words that sting and bite" indeed!

This book doesn't just fill you with wonderful facts about the Italian Renaissance (although it does that in bucketfulls - just wait until you get to the part about the Florentine craftsman who got gaslit-pranked so badly he had to leave the country in shame) and spin stories about its figures who are revealed to be wonderful, flawed, and deeply human people. It teaches you grand lessons about how we study history, understand history, activate history. And it makes you want to lay your bricks in the unfinished cathedral of a golden age we still don't have the plans for yet, but by God, let us go forth and make a better, unimaginable world.

[Marks54 · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book about the Renaissance by an accomplished historian of the period. But it is much more than just another book of Renaissance history. It is instead a book on the historiography of the Renaissance - an integrative study of how historians have looked at the period and learned from each other in the process of doing so. In this sense, it is a meta-history of the Renaissance. This sort of study has costs and benefits for a reader. You do not get a clear single story with a clear resolution. Events have multiple meanings and multiple often conflicting interpretations. It is never clear just what, precisely, the Renaissance was, when it started, who was involved, or where it occurred. But if you have read a bit about the period and can tolerate a bit of ambiguity, the result is a much more satisfying and engaging account of the period. Professor Palmer is also skillful and linking the Renaissance (whatever it is) with the different (similar ambiguous) periods that gave birth to the Renaissance and came afterwards. This is a distinctive and to me attractive way to think about intellectual and cultural history and I found myself engaged by this book to an extent that has not occurred for most of the books I have read about the period.

While this is a long and demanding book, I recommend it to those interested in the Renaissance.

[Marianne · Rating 5 out of 5]

can a book be both accessible and magisterial? yes, though too rarely. this is one such book. I loved reading it and I love imagining other people reading it and I look forward to my continued peripheral participation in the conversations it flows with, around, and through.

[Noora · Rating 5 out of 5]

I haven't been this excited about history in like ten years. I haven't been this excited about a book in longer than that. I had to take breaks to shake out the excitement, I'm not kidding. Ada Palmer is engaging and fun and tells the stories in a way that places her, in my mind, firmly on the same pedestal as my favorite history teacher. (I credit her as the reason I picked history as my high school major all those years ago.)

Through the book, through various asides and repetitions, I feel like I've actually genuinely learned things, which, not to make this about many other historians I've read in my life, somehow isn't a given even if you're interested in the subject. Maybe for the first time in my life I feel like I understand what the hell was going on with the popes during the renaissance. And maybe to some people the stylistic choices of those asides feels scattered, I really do feel like it makes this book come together very well. Because by the end you've understood how all of this links together. And isn't that what history is all about?

I can't talk for people who aren't already interested in history and renaissance, but I'm going to attempt to anyway. This book, despite it's size, is approachable. It's interesting, fascinating, fun and it keeps you interested the entire time. I recommend obtaining a physical copy if at all possible. Trust me.

[Ari · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ada Palmer is both a popular science-fiction writer and also a tenured professor of Renaissance history. She is kind of a genius. This resulted in a book that probably no other working historian could have written.

This is not her most tightly structured work; it was initially meant as a revised improved version of various things she had blogged. But, professionalism, and so it has emerged as a substantial and carefully-constructed work, with a substantial set of notes and references.

She is trying to explain what we mean by the renaissance, by renaissance humanism, etc.

[BethFishReads · Rating 4 out of 5]

Using light humor and an informal style Palmer introduces readers/listeners to a Renaissance that many of us have never fully seen. Note that this book is more of a look at Renaissance history than a history of the Renaissance.

One of the ongoing themes of the book is an examination of why we think of the Renaissance as a Golden Age. Palmer uses several approaches, but I was especially interested in the 15 short biographies. She used these people (men and women) to demonstrate that we can't think of the Renaissance in separate chunks: politics, art, religion, and sociocultural change were intertwined in complex ways, just as they are in contemporary life.

Overall, I gained a new perspective on the era and can recommend the book. It's long and jam-packed with information and things to think about, but the journey is worth it.

I was lucky enough to have both an egalley and a review copy of the audiobook. As I've said many times, my favorite way to read history is to listen to an audiobook but have the print/digital edition available so I can see the illustrations (maps, photos, tables) and see the names and foreign words.

The audiobook was performed by Candida Gubbins. I appreciated hearing her pronunciations of places and names and thought she did a fair job at picking up on the author's casual style. At first, I was thrown off by Gubbins's accent, which unfortunately sounded a little school marm-y to me, but I soon got used to her voice and was caught up in the people and politics of the Renaissance.

Note that the print/digital edition includes photographs of some of the places and artwork mentioned in the book. Interested audiobook fans could, however, find many similar images via an internet search. The book contains a few tables and a few lists; that information was a little easier to absorb in print format; however, I still recommend this book in either medium.

Thanks to University of Chicago Press for the review copies.

[johnny dangerously · Rating 4 out of 5]

Books like this are complicated for me. I really, really love them; I desperately want more of them; I wish they were written differently. Historiography, especially the conceptual stuff (what do we think about when we think about X? Why do we think that way? Where does that idea come from, and is it from history, or just books and TV?) really fascinate me. History is a bunch of symbols which we reinterpret every generation, and what we think of a period, a date, an event, is shaped by where we are now... and the last bit of big media frenzy over that period. It's fascinating, and it's much more vivid and vivacious than a point-by-point summary of what dates certain events took place. History is more than truth or lies, accuracy or inaccuracy. It's the conversations we have, and what we think is worth including in those conversations.

But, because these books are so conceptual, they tend to be kind of low on information. There's a lot to think about in this book, and a lot to learn. There's also a lot of fluff.

I get it. Palmer is writing in a really informal style, because she doesn't want to be an ivory tower academic who writes in a purposefully arch style to confuse and alienate plebs. As a pleb (I sure don't have a four year degree), I appreciate it. But there's always the risk of talking down to people, or implicitly signaling who is supposed to be reading your books. Palmer mostly avoids that, but there were a few moments that really made me groan. I do not need references to Firefly and Army of Darkness in my history book; I do not need the rib-elbowing understanding that we're all nerds here, ehh? Ehhh? We're the right kind of nerds, bookish chortlers who go squee and watch Doctor Who. Please, talk up to me, I bought your book.

Palmer also seems to be concerned I won't get her point, so she repeats it over and over, sometimes multiple times a chapter. I assume this is because she's an educator; she really really really wants to make sure I get the point. SPQR, SPQF! Historians in Greenland! Battle pope and warrior pope! These little references, and the concepts attached to them, show up in almost every chapter, which is a good rhetorical device! But maybe in a shorter book, with fewer chapters. Especially since I felt a few other concepts went under-explained. I wanted more about the contrasting tyranny of republicanism in Florence, the way art bolstered legitimacy, and the morals of peace that got referenced a few times. I wanted to know more about Machiavelli, who has four chapters dedicated to him but only shows up in two of them. I did not need the basics of moral philosophy explained to me the second time, or the third, or the... tenths. The first time was nice, though.

I guess what I'm saying is that this book is a little disorganized, and it chases its own tail a bit. I find this to be the case in a lot of 'out of the box' educational materials, which assume that if you're excited enough, you'll just get it! Because learning is easy for everyone, and we don't need to worry about the accessibility of information. Because most educators-- and, I assume, students at better and more prestigious colleges-- don't have learning disabilities, there doesn't tend to be a lot of emphasis placed on making information organized and easy to digest when it's taught in an unconventional way.

I'm not saying the book had to be in chronological order-- I found it quite refreshing that it wasn't-- but I wish more time had been spent connecting the ideas that each chapter had, building on the previous thesis to bolster the next, rather than reiterating information without a ton of analysis. It's a book, so if I missed what dentology was, I could have gone back and reread. By the 14th time it was explained, I was fully tuning out, struggling to understand what bigger point the chapter was actually trying to make because it had gotten so lost in the weeds.

I'm not sure someone without a learning disability will have these problems? But I did and it's my review, so.

All in all, however, I consider this book a triumph. I've never found the Italian Renaissance very interesting, mostly because it's spoken about with such bejeweled reverence. I don't like romanticized history populated by buxom wax figures dressed in crushed velvet; it's boring. Ada Palmer successfully makes these people real, makes me care about their lives, makes me want to know more. Isn't that the goal of every educator?

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

Super interesting treatment of the Renaissance! I learned a lot, and enjoyed how she tied all the threads together, even while questioning whether or not there was a distinct movement called the Renaissance at all. I loved learning about why Florence is considered the heart of the Renaissance and hearing different perspectives on Machiavelli and even Savanarola. Ada Palmer is brilliant, and so readable. Highly recommend this title!

[Nicki Markus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Inventing the Renaissance was a highly engaging romp through Renaissance history that managed to be both informative and entertaining at once, with the author referencing everything from Plato to Batman and Assassin's Creed. Some of the nicknames she gave the historical figures were so catchy I don't think I'll ever forget them (Battle Pope 2!) and they helped, too, in keeping characters straight in your mind as you read, considering the number of repeating first names among the major players (notably the Popes). It was fascinating to see how many of our perceptions about the Renaissance stem from later centuries, and the author offered some interesting new perspectives on events I had thought I already knew well. Despite its length, this book remained captivating throughout save, for me at least, a slight lull in Part IV with the lengthy discussion on humanism. If you are a history fan, it's definitely worth a read, especially since it combines perfectly a compelling narrative with academic rigour. I am giving it 4.5 stars.

I received this book as a free eBook ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Danielle · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most engaging histories I've ever read. It's not structured as a traditional history either, to its benefit. I've read quite a bit about the Italian Renaissance already, and I still learned a lot for this book.

[Venneh · Rating 5 out of 5]

An extremely excellent overview of how we perceive the Renaissance and how it plays into our perception of history, both past and present and our own. I like the fact that we get several profiles of renaissance superstars that are honest about “oh this dude was at minimum gay as hell”, and deontology vs virtue ethics with pop culture characters as test cases. It’s a dense read but it’s engaged me in a way I haven’t been able to mentally in a long damn time. A highly recommended read. (Prof Palmer, any chance any of your classes are open to members of the public who’d just like to sit in and learn?)

[Stuart · Rating 5 out of 5]

This review originally appeared on my website at: https://www.stuartellisgorman.com/blo...

As a card-carrying member of the Hates the Term Renaissance club, a not uncommon position for late medievalists like myself who are inclined to resent the division of our time period into dark and golden ages, I was immediately intrigued by Ada Palmer’s reexamination of the term and its time. Inventing the Renaissance promised to deconstruct one of the most mythologized periods of European history, and one that I felt warranted some poking and prodding. Palmer’s book is not a hit piece against late medieval Italy, though. Instead, as all great deconstructions are, it is a combination love letter and deep analysis of a period whose complexities are often painted over by popular narratives that just want to talk about the pretty art and clever people. Further, Inventing the Renaissance performs the magisterial hat trick of being incredibly insightful while also remaining eminently approachable and casual as it dumps a mountain of scholarship on its reader – in the most loving way. It’s an incredibly impressive work, both of scholarship and popular history, and one absolutely worthy of the time its 700+ pages require.

In the immortal words of Inigo Montoya “… no there is too much. Let me sum up.” Inventing the Renaissance contains what could be several books worth of material. It is a history of ideas, ranging from Petrarch in the 14th century to Francis Bacon in the 17th (and sometimes even further) – explaining how we got from medieval frameworks to modern. It is also a history of culture, of art, philosophy, and how Italian art and architecture spread around the globe (often violently). It is also a book on politics, both political thought and the nitty gritty politics of war-torn Italy, and at times even a little bit about war. It is also the story of people who lived in a disrupted and violent time and struggled to live in a better one. It is a staggering work in terms of its scope, and it manages to cover all of this while rarely feeling shallow in its detail. I could nit pick a few sentences here and there on military history (my own little niche), but those complaints don’t really matter. They are far removed from the work’s core, and one must be reasonable about what is achievable and important to a work like this. It already achieves more than I could have expected.

Perhaps my favorite aspect of Inventing the Renaissance is how it is also about history as a process, and what it means to be a historian and to do historical work. Framed as the “History Lab”, Palmer does an excellent job at breaking down how research works and how historians build on the work of those who came before. She clearly elucidates why history isn’t static, it’s not just historians using the same collection of facts in a new pattern but rather a process which develops and grows over time thanks to the contributions of historians. She also explains how differing perspectives from different academic subjects interact, and how those views of the Renaissance can paint radically different pictures of the time. This is one of the best books I’ve read explaining what it is to be a historian, and it does that as almost a tertiary subject within its overall scope.

I am obsessed with structure, and I’m not sure I’ve ever read a book with a structure as interesting (or strange) as Inventing the Renaissance. It opens with a broad treatment of the Renaissance, in particular a fascinating discussion of historiography and historical memory of the Renaissance. That is approximately what I expected when I first heard about this book. It perhaps even persuaded me to be (slightly) less bitchy about the term Renaissance and made me consider ways in which it may have value as a periodization. I’m not saying I’m totally won over, but maybe I will complain with slightly less fervor next time the topic comes up in the pub.

The more interesting (structurally at least) section of the book is the core which is composed of more than a dozen mini biographies of major and minor figures from Renaissance Italy. People who made the time what it was, and whose lives offer significant (and different!) insights into that time. Each of these stories is fascinating, but through their steady repetition Palmer builds a greater understanding of Italy and the events that shaped it in the decades around the turn of the sixteenth century. By the end of these vignettes, you will be familiar with a wide cast of historical people who stretch far beyond those directly covered in this section. It’s a truly impressive feat that must have taken a staggering amount of research and time to put together. It manages to drip feed the wider context in a way that makes its complexities digestible, but it also cements the human element of the time, never letting the larger events leave behind the personal stories.

The final section concerns itself primarily with the notion of what humanism means, and what we mean when we discuss “Renaissance Humanism”. This topic comes up in the book’s opening sections, and throughout the biographies in its core, but here readers are fully submerged in an explanation of what the intellectual revolution of the Renaissance meant, what were its consequences, and (just as importantly) what it wasn’t. This was probably my least favorite section, but not due to any real failure on Palmer’s part. I’m not an intellectual historian type, and I didn’t enjoy the deep dive as much as some others probably will. Still, this section is impressively thorough and approachable and manages to range widely across centuries of history without ever feeling like it is taking short cuts or reaching for conclusions beyond what its theories can support.

Inventing the Renaissance is a work that is haunted by the ghost of Machiavelli. No figure looms half so large in the story as old Nick and his revolutionary philosophy. He is the subject of the final vignette in the book’s core, but he is also a prominent figure in the book’s opening and throughout other stories as well. Inventing the Renaissance doesn’t limit itself to just discussing Nick’s philosophy – although it does an excellent job of explaining why that was so important, what made it revolutionary, and how it is often misunderstood – rather we meet the whole person. Machiavelli’s life teaches us about him, but it also informs us of the time he lived with its highs and lows. Palmer’s sincere caring for Machiavelli shines through in her writing and it will be nearly impossible for readers to not leave the book more sympathetic to this sometimes-notorious figure than they started (I, for one, have always had a soft spot for him since we share a birthday). It wouldn’t be fair to say that this is a book primarily about Machiavelli, but at the same time one could argue that the core thesis of this work, the thing that holds all its disparate ideas together, is that it is a book that will make you begin to understand Machiavelli, the philosopher and the person.

Inventing the Renaissance is a daunting read. It’s over 700 pages long and covers one of the most complex periods in European history. There are so many people, events, and wild occurrences to remember. Thankfully, Palmer provides a steady hand as she leads you through many (but not all) of its vast corridors. You can see the legacy of years spent teaching this subject to students in this book, as it is delivered with the care and consideration of someone used to explaining this material to people for the first time. It also shows the skills of someone who knows how to make difficult facts stick, and when to remind people about key details, or even just how to make someone memorable in a sea of similarly named historical figures. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that this is a book for literally everyone, but I’m also not sure who wouldn’t enjoy Inventing the Renaissance. It is the kind of popular history that other books aspire to be, a stunning piece of writing and history.

[Juliette · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rating : 5 ⭐
I guess Ada Palmer can't write anything less than a five star book in my eyes. This is a great non-fiction book for learning about both history and the present. The audiobook narrator was fantastic. I can definitely see myself rereading this eventually.

[Chris Jaffe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. That was impressive as all get out.

The Renaissance is one of those periods I've never felt I had a great grasp on. I tend to do best when a period has a clear political narrative and that is so incredibly not the Renaissance. Very well then - Palmer makes the messiness part of the story.

This book is 650 pages of text, broken up 67 chapters, which is especially impressive given that there a few long chapters, including a 50-pager. Palmer offers a series of snapshots, and popping up questions and moving about, and in the process you get a bigger sense of the overall picture. Also, while the level of info here clearly shows that Palmer is a master of this period, the writing style would never lead you to believe she's an academic, let alone one from the University of Chicago. Palmer adopts a very freewheeling and informal style, that makes this the most easy-to-read 650-page book written by an academic that I can recall.

So what the hell can we say was the Renaissance? Was it just the period between the Bubonic Plague and the Enlightment? Sure, it was -- but just listing it as a placeholder period doesn't tell us much about it. She notes people have argued it's the sight of a key movement or idea that helped spark modern times. People differ on what that idea can be - democracy, secularism, individualism, etc. And you can find evidence for any of those defining features, but you can also find reasons to oppose all of them. The Renaissance: it's messy.

Also messy: what is even meant by Renaissance humanism? Is it a way to activate antiquity? Is it a way to exchange letters with a key figure like Erasmus? Is it more a philosophy or an ideology or an economic movement or an artistic movement? Seemingly anyway you define it, you'll exclude some key Renaissance figures and include some non-Renaissance figures. The Renaissance: still messy.

The Renaissance can be seen as the birth of the modern, but it was also intentionally backwards looking. For guys like Petrarch, we must recapture the wisdom and virtue of the ancients like Cicero, because by emulating them we can improve our lives, our selves, and our societies. It didn't work. And 150 years later, Machiavelli noted we must try something different because my goodness did the peninusla fall in the shitter in his lifetime. There was a belief that you could reconcile all sorts of older ideals. This is what Abelard had done, showing how seemingly contradictory ideas weren't so contradictory. But as we recovered more Greek and Roman writings, it became obvious those ideas did actually contradict. You couldn't pretend that Seneca was some secret Christian. Aristotle and Christ didn't line up as well as people wanted to think. By the late Renaissance, thanks to recovering more of Aristotle and reviving Lucreitus and the voyages of Columbus and the ongoing Reformation, you couldn't Abelard your way out of things any more. Medieval times ranked their evidence as: 1) authority, 2) logic, and 3) evidence. But appeals to authority broke down as there wasn't any single authority to appeal to and you reckonized mistakes olden guys had made. Evidence came to top other by the time of Galileo and Francis Bacon - and that's when the Renaissance gave way to what Palmer terms Try-Everything Age (basically, the early Enlightment). A lot of this paragraph comes from the later stages of the book.

The early stages pose the big questions on the nature of the Renaissance and the various ideas of what it stood for. The middle section includes brief (or sometimes not-so-brief biographies of 15 or so Renaissance figures, to give us a sense on the variety of the book. Then Palmer tries wrap it up with a series of smaller end sections. For me, the bio section dragged a bit because it was so hard to keep track of who was doing what and huh? It's still pretty good.

Some random notes: Humanism was opposed to the scholaristic movement of guys like St. Thomas Aquinas. Petrarch hated those guys. There were republics- but even in those republics a belief in a hierarchy. This played out in the patron-client system (they even saw heaven the same way with saints). A book cost as much as a house. (But later on, a century or so after the printing press, a book only cost about a month's wages). The printing press was key but what really activated it was when eventually a distribution system emerged. Guttenberg printed up the two most sought after books he could think of - a BIble and a grammar book - but in the town he lived in, that would only lead to a handful of sales. Eventually a distribution system emerged (over decades, maybe over a century) and that caused ideas to spread with the printed word. That caused people to note things like Lucretaius more than they had before. Prior to 1500, arguably only Machiavelli noted the more radical aspects of the book, whereas others focused on things like grammar. Palmer argues that Francis Bacon invented our notion of progress around the year 1500. Machiavelli helped usher in a utilitarian form of ethics. Before him you had virtue ethics, which judged actions based on interior motives. There was also deontology, where ethics are based on a series of laws external to the doer. Also, there's voluntarism which says it's only ethical if it meets both previously listed criteria.

EXCELLENT BOOK

[Derek · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a highly original and fairly comprehensive overview of Renaissance historiography. I really appreciated the author’s informal and often funny style as well. And I don’t think the fact that I read this in Venice biased me in any way. :)

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn’t know that history could be this much fun. Ada Palmer made me wish that I was a historian, working alongside her in the “History Lab”. A nuanced, erudite, wide-ranging and entertaining look at the history (and the history of the history) of the (mostly Italian but not just Italian) Renaissance.

Palmer challenges our idea of the Renaissance: she rejects popular simple narratives and origin stories, the “x-factors”, the lenses that other historians have used to explain and describe the Renaissance and to tie this “Golden Age” into larger narratives of progress, nation state development, and modernity. Palmer’s (mostly Italian) Renaissance is a contradiction: violent and brutal and contingent, religiously conservative but intellectually curious; a time when scholars looked back to the past to create a new future; a time when towering works of artistic genius were created (and which survive today in cities like Rome and especially Florence, thanks to accidents of history). A time both familiar and unfamiliar.

There are no clear-cut heroes or villains in Palmer’s story, not Michelangelo, or Lorenzo the Magnificent, or even Machiavelli, who towers over everyone else (although Alexander and Cesare Borgia cannot but come out as power-mad, ruthless, immoral). The only villains are perhaps the 19th century historians who made up their own, different "Renaissances".

Palmer dismisses the idea of “Dark Ages” leading to a Renaissance, because “Dark Ages” and corresponding “Golden Ages” have been, and continue to be, abused for political or ideological purposes. But something significant did change starting in 14th century Italy: scholars started to turn away from Scholastic theological projects justifying the ways of God to men through Aristotelian logic, and towards broader political and social projects.

Palmer traces the arc of Petrarch’s idealistic “Virtue Politics” social engineering project over the course of the Renaissance: educating elite “philosopher kings” in the mold of Cicero and Seneca, using examples from classical Roman literary and political works and perfect classical Latin rhetoric as a “mirror for princes” to remake Italian political leaders (and thereby reshape its politics). Instead of Petrarch’s goal of “peace, peace, peace”, this period saw a series of corrupt “Battle Popes”, ceaseless petty and “cruel wars for light causes” and violent dynastic rivalries between and within city states, exhausting political intrigues, betrayals and bribes, women used as political pawns, assassinations and poisonings, very public executions, and invasions by foreign powers. If the idea of the Renaissance starts with Petrarch, it ends with Machiavelli’s “The Prince”, with the birth of political science and political and social history - and more importantly, with consequentialist ethcs (the end justifies the means) and Realpolitik.

The Renaissance starts with a handful of earnest Italian scholars, with Petrarch and manuscript hunters like Poggio, excited to find rare copies of classical Latin works (such as “On the Nature of Things” by Lucretius - see Stephen Greenblatt’s “The Swerve”), in a time when each manuscript was worth the price of a house; to the recovery of ancient Greek and of classical Greek works in western Europe, especially Plato (and more Aristotle, beyond his works on logic that Boethius translated into Latin almost 1000 years earlier). It ends with the Print Revolution in the 16th century, its explosion of ideas and competing truths, creating a new and bigger community of readers and writers with new agendas, the rise of skepticism and the undermining of universal authority, which led to the Protestant Reformation, the Scientific Revolution (the 17th century “Try Everything Age”) and the Enlightenment (empiricism applied to social thinking).

Palmer also examines the history of Humanism and Humanistic thinking (see Sarah Bakewell’s “Humanly Possible”) and early atheism. She explains that atheism, before Darwin undid the idea of “God the Maker”, was epistemically untenable. Atheists, if there were any, were not as much of a threat to the authority of the Catholic Church as heterodox religious thinkers.

And finally, she looks at the role that we all play in History: how individuals can respond to, and help shape, larger historical forces and historical outcomes.

This is not a perfect book. It is a bit too long. There are too many unimportant names and dates and detailed lists, especially in Part III, which describes life in the Renaissance through 15 thumbnail biographical sketches to create a kaleidoscopic picture, spiralling through the same events in an unnecessarily repetitive way - Palmer could have cut out a few of these characters without losing anything meaningful.

Palmer is a talented story teller, entertaining and playfully articulate, although sometimes too playful, too “ever so much more-so”. She is a marvellous teacher - I envy her students. I would love to see her write another, similar book on The Enlightenment.

[Kam Yung Soh · Rating 3 out of 5]

A long but interesting history on the period known as the Renaissance, when many of the things that make up modern society, from science to humanism, came out of nowhere: of course not. As the author (a historian and fantasy writer) shows, many of the things and ways of thinking that came out of the Renaissance build on what people did in the Middle Ages (no longer the Dark Ages). These changes would continue into the Enlightenment, and then into the modern world.

The book starts by looking at one particular place: Florence. In an era where most places were ruled by royalty, Florence stood out by being a republic, officially ruled by 'elected' people. But even then, this was no modern democracy: only the elite of the elite could be elected and even then, they were subjects of patronage to various wealthy families, most notably the House of Medici, who 'called the shots' when it came to making (or gaming) the rules to their advantage.

But Florence is only a city, and can be conquered by rival cities or countries. One way to counter this was to make Florence indispensable, by promoting ancient studies and the arts and spreading them far and wide. Other rulers began to accept that acquiring culture and learning from Florence were 'better' ways of showing they were superior to their betters. This gave Florence influence and access to the 'great powers', gaining protecting in return.

The author then shows us the lives of various people during the Renaissance period, mostly from Florence, to give us a view of what life was like for elites (written history usually focus on the elites, few on the peasants) at the time. And life at that time was rough and full of intrigue and conflict. We see the rise and fall of the Medicis and the influence of Florence, and parts of the 'Great Game' as France, the Popes in Rome, the various city states of Italy (Venice, etc.) strive to gain control of Italy and of Europe.

In all of these struggles, the idea that 'there has to be a better way' starts to gain strength and are covered in a section that covers one of the most 'notorious' people in the Renaissance period: Niccolò Machiavelli. His writings on how rulers should rule would lead to modern Political Science. But at the time, his writings were a struggle to understand what the rulers of his time were doing to gain an advantage over others and what could be done to raise the condition of humanity as a whole.

The final section looks at just what the Renaissance really put forth: a lot of questions that need answers. These questions would gradually overturn the idea that ancient authority was always right, and that ideas need to be tested by questioning them and comparing them with evidence. This would lead to the idea of Progress.

Here, the author looks at current times and shows that the idea of Progress as a way to improve humanity is still a work in progress. Technological and social changes have improved mankind but also caused problems (like colonialism and racism). While much has changed, much still has to be done using concepts that rose during the Renaissance. And the author is optimistic that the future will get better, given time.

[Robert Morris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant. Through the past rather grim month of US ideological poison, this book has been a delightful break, as well as an education on how ideological strains, good and ill, spread through our society and our perceptions of our history. Before this book, I mostly knew Ada Palmer for her phenomenal Terra Ignota series of science fiction novels. But she was a historian before she was a sci-fi king, and she may be even better at her first profession than her second.

Palmer is a history professor at the University of Chicago, focused on Renaissance history. This is her most ambitious foray into popular history, though I'm not quite sure that label applies. Popular history usually prioritizes readability, which this book does, but it also usually leans towards simplicity, which this book doesn't do at all. "Inventing the Renaissance" does a lot, but one of her main goals is to point out that the story of Italian rediscovery of classical learning is a lot more complicated than we typically portray it. That she manages to dive into this complexity, and also maintain a fun sense of informality, almost a page-turner, without falling into gimmickry is a testament to her skill. She sometimes makes it look easy, but it took a tremendous amount of learning and thought to create this book.

On one level, this book is 650 page defense of Machiavelli, the Florentine politician who many credit with inventing the discipline of political science. From Shakespeare down to contemporary hip hop songs, Machiavelli has been caricatured as an advocate of evil and manipulation. Wasn't the Renaissance supposed to be a golden age of learning, art, and renewed virtue? Why was this Machiavelli guy stinking up the place with his mean ideas?

Palmer dispenses with that myth in the first few pages. Renaissance thinkers were driven to reinterpret classical learning out of desperation, not wealth and pleasure. The centuries leading up to Machiavelli were filled with war, plague, famine and more plague. With her book Palmer attempts to explain just how bad things were in Renaissance Italy, and lay out why Machiavelli's suggestions might make sense, and even be profoundly moral. She takes us through a variety of Renaissance lives, moving through the history of Italy, but Florence in particular.

In the process, Palmer doesn't just convincingly defend Machiavelli and provide a more impressively clear guide to the Italian Wars than any other I have ever encountered. She also finds the time to walk through the historiography of the Renaissance. She covers the different ways people thought about the Renaissance in each of the historical eras that followed it. Palmer gets into fairly deep and complex issues of philosophy and what we can ever truly know about history or the people who lived through it. This book is a tremendous amount of fun, and also deeply nourishing for the noggin. Highest possible recommendation.