Inventing the Renaissance
Myths of a Golden Age
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Inventing the Renaissance
Narrated by:
Candida Gubbins
Buy Now for $41.55
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Narrated by:
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Candida Gubbins
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By:
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Ada Palmer
The Renaissance is one of the most studied and celebrated eras of history. Spanning the end of the Middle Ages to the beginning of modernity, it has come to symbolise the transformative rebirth of knowledge, art, culture and political thought in Europe. And for the last two hundred years, historians have struggled to describe what makes this famous golden age unique.
In Inventing the Renaissance, acclaimed historian Ada Palmer provides a fresh perspective on what makes this epoch so captivating. Her witty and irreverent journey through the fantasies historians have constructed about the period show how its legend derives more from later centuries’ mythmaking than from the often grim reality of the period itself. She examines its defining figures and movements: the enduring legacy of Niccolò Machiavelli, the rediscovery of the classics, the rise of the Medici and fall of the Borgias, the astonishing artistic achievements of Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Cellini, the impact of the Inquisition and the expansion of secular Humanism. Palmer also explores the ties between culture and money: books, for example, could cost as much as grand houses, so the period’s innovative thinkers could only thrive with the help of the super-rich. She offers fifteen provocative and entertaining character portraits of Renaissance men and women, some famous, some obscure, whose intersecting lives show how the real Renaissance was more unexpected, more international and, above all, more desperate than its golden reputation suggests.
Drawing on her popular blogs and writing with her characteristic energy and wit, Palmer presents the Renaissance as we have never seen it before. Colloquial, funny and brilliant, you would never expect a work of deep scholarship to make you alternately laugh and cry.©2025 Ada Palmer (P)2025 Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
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Critic Reviews
A fascinating look at how ideas ripple and spread.
Generous, brilliant, and inviting, Ada Palmer’s Inventing the Renaissance is a triumph... this is a work of deep erudition worn lightly but excitingly that offers a history of the Renaissance with a unique and personal imprint. If you are a scholar of the period, you will find new insights and interpretations, and if you are coming to the Renaissance for the first time, you will find an engaging and eloquent companion in Ada Palmer.
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 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.'
An urgent corrective to modern myths about an ill-used past. Palmer has written a vital, absorbing and incredibly entertaining history of the so-called Renaissance. Challenging conventional wisdom, Inventing the Renaissance delves deep into the historical circumstances that have given rise to one of the most pervasive and frustrating narratives of the early modern period. It is a must read for all history enthusiasts.
Palmer is one of the most fascinating writers, thinkers, performers, and speakers I know. This is the book for every history nerd in your life, and also a magic artifact with the power to transform normies into history nerds.
This is a work of supreme importance, in that it takes a fascinating period of human history and brings the reader to confront many issues that are often overlooked, including the prejudices of our own views. Profound scholarship and imaginative powers support what is clearly the author’s aim: to help the reader exercise critical thinking on the material before them. While this may be primarily intended for younger history students, its lively narration and perceptive analysis bring joy and delight to seasoned scholars too.
An enjoyable, capacious book about an inexhaustible subject
[A] jauntily written corrective
Strewn with learned allusions, humour and demotic wit, Inventing the Renaissance is the work of a remarkable scholar
A Challenging Book
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Brilliant
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Why does history matter? What is the point of re-examining it through a “modern” lens? How does history shape our society today. Delivered with wit and insight this is a must read for history lovers.
The narration was well delivered and the many Italian names were spoken with confidence so I will assume correctness. I would have loved to hear the author narrate this but I think her sense of humour came through in the audiobook.
A new way to look at history
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A very well written history
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