Inventing the Renaissance is a 2025 pop history book by historian of ideas Ada Palmer. I'm someone who rarely completes nonfic books, but i finished this one & got a lot of new perspectives out of it. It's a fun read! I tried this book after attending a talk by Palmer in which she not only had good insights but also simply knew a lot of new-to-me context about the history of Europe. Time to reduce my ignorance!

ItR is a conversational introduction to the European Renaissance. It mostly talks about 1400 thru 1600, & mostly Italy, because these are the placetimes Palmer has studied the most. But it also talks a lot about how, ever since that time, many cultures have been delighted by the paradigm of a Renaissance, & have categorized that period very differently.

Interesting ideas in this book:

• Claim: There has never been any golden age nor any dark age on Earth. Ages tend to be paradoxical juxtapositions of the downstream effects of the last age & the early seeds of the next age. 
• In 1500, Florence feels familiar to us moderns. It's literate & cosmopolitan. We have detailed records. There are even life [...]

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.