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Inventing the Renaissance: The Myth of a Golden Age
Paperback
Medieval & Renaissance HistoryGeneral World History
Publisher Price: $24.00
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ISBN10: 0226852598
ISBN13: 9780226852591
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: May 27 2026
Pages: 768
Weight: 2.20
Height: 1.80 Width: 6.00 Depth: 8.90
Language: English
ISBN13: 9780226852591
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: May 27 2026
Pages: 768
Weight: 2.20
Height: 1.80 Width: 6.00 Depth: 8.90
Language: English
A New Yorker Best Book of 2025
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 it 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.1 different editions
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