When I was a kid, I had this idea that history was boring, because the history books that my parents assigned me for homeschool were boring. This led to my parents giving up on teaching me much history. As an adult, free to choose my own books, it took me a while to make my way to the history section, but it turns out there’s some really good stuff out there these days.
Inventing the Renaissance by Ada Palmer is not just a book about history, but also about historiography, the study of the study of history. She talks about how different people define the Renaissance differently, depending on what “it factor” and geographical area they focus on, and how our understanding of the Renaissance (and other historical periods) has changed as we’ve developed new research methods and gained access to new information.
But that all might make it sound like Inventing the Renaissance is also kind of boring, which could not be further from the truth. This book is funny and thoughtful and enlightening and just plain interesting to read. Palmer fills the book with pop culture references and running jokes and silly nicknames which help you remember the important players and concepts in her particular corner of the Renaissance, which is primarily Florence.
In addition to current pop culture, Palmer uses Shakespeare a lot, which will probably help you both understand the Renaissance better, and Shakespeare as well.
For me, history is always more interesting when it’s grounded more in the lives of individual people than in big events like wars, the founding of nations, or major inventions. Palmer seems to understand that and largely uses biographies of fascinating historical figures to illustrate the political, religious, economic, and academic movements of the time period.
This book is a commitment — the audiobook is 30 hours long! — but it’s so entertaining that it feels a lot more like bingeing a few seasons of a juicy historical drama TV show than cramming for a history exam. Because I got it from the library, I had to get through it in 21 days (the length of a Libby loan from the library in question), and even though I had other commitments and even though I have to listen to audio at 1x speed (thanks, auditory processing delay!) I actually managed to return it a day early, because I was listening to it at every chance I got. I even bought a speaker for my bathroom so I could listen to it in the shower and while doing my makeup.
The problem with choosing audio as the format for this book was that of course I don’t remember a lot of the specific names and am not clear on the spelling of the ones I do remember. I will definitely be picking up a physical copy so I can refer back to some of my favorite sections and better commit the facts to memory.
I really appreciated that even though Inventing the Renaissance is a long book, a lot of the chapters were shorter, so it was easy to knock a chapter out while driving around doing errands, or something like that. A few break the hour mark, but some are just a few minutes long, which also makes it easy to “one more chapter” yourself into reading for longer than you originally planned.
I whole-heartedly recommend this book for anyone who wants to be reminded that history can be fun and interesting, especially if you’re looking for a thicc book that won’t feel like a heavy lift.
CWs and TWs: Because it covers several hundred years of very eventful history, this book touches on a LOT of potentially triggering topics, including war, famine, plague, child death, parental death, relationships with dubious levels of consent, ableism, homophobia, fatphobia, religious persecution, and probably a few things I’m forgetting.
Source and Format: I borrowed the audiobook from Seattle Public Library.
Reading Challenge Prompts
SAL/SPL/KCLS: One Big Book. I took this prompt seriously. 30 hours!!! I haven’t looked at a physical copy to see how big it is, but I bet it’s a chonker.
Reading Challenge Progress
Nook & Cranny (Card 1): 10 of 25, no bingos.
Nook & Cranny (Card 2): 15 of 25, 1 bingo.
Book Riot: 12 of 25.
Physical TBR: 6 of 12.
World of Whimm: 18 of 24, 3 bingos.
SAL/SPL/KCLS: 12 of 23, no bingos.