Inventing the Renaissance: The Myth of a Golden Age

Our Review:

I picked up this book expecting a straightforward historical corrective, and instead found myself laughing out loud at Ada Palmer's irreverent demolition of every Renaissance postcard I've ever seen. She writes history like she's gossiping with a friend who actually knows the material—sharp, funny, and genuinely angry at how badly we've gotten the story wrong. The fifteen portraits she offers aren't dry biographical sketches; they're windows into a world that's messier, more violent, and somehow more human than the "golden age" mythology we inherited.

What struck me most was how Palmer traces the nostalgia backward: medieval Europeans invented their vision of Rome to escape endless war, then Renaissance historians did the same thing, looking back at the Renaissance itself. It's a clever argument about how we use the past as a mirror for our own anxieties, and she makes it feel urgent rather than academic. The book moves fast, even when diving into specific lives and political tangles, because Palmer genuinely seems to be having fun puncturing holes in old stories.

That said, this isn't a book for someone wanting a comforting narrative arc or a sense of inevitable progress. Palmer's Renaissance is desperate, fragile, and often brutal—which is exactly the point, but it means you're signing up for something more complicated than "here's what really happened." If you love history that challenges you, that reads like a conversation with someone smarter than you who doesn't mind being provocative, this is a genuine treat.